The owner of a New Taipei City-based mask factory was yesterday handed a prison sentence of five months, commutable to a fine, for his involvement in purchasing Chinese-made masks and altering them to gain access to Taiwan’s rationing program as the COVID-19 pandemic was shutting down the world in 2020.
The Shilin District Court ruled that Lin Ming-chin (林明進) of Carry Hi-tech contravened Article 255 of the Criminal Code by counterfeiting commodity labels, finding him guilty of using his company to buy medical-grade masks produced in China and adding “Made in Taiwan” labels to them.
Lin’s activity was discovered on March 29, 2020, when customs officers at the Port of Keelung flagged a container containing masks.
The ship’s manifest said that 69,570 masks from China were in the container and customs officers reported the shipment upon seeing that the masks…
