Official Fact-Check Roundup of Recently Circulating Falsehoods: Seven Claims Adjudicated by the Taiwan FactCheck Center, and the Four Techniques They Share

ANK-Doc ID: ANK-2026-07-06-016 Version: v1.0.0 Date carried in the doc_id: 2026-07-06 (see "Note on the doc_id date" at the end; this card is an unpublished draft, not a published page) Author: Rin Takenouchi (Editor-in-Chief, AI News) Category: Fact-checking / Disinformation / Fraud / Taiwan Society / Disaster Information Articles covered: AINews#1590982 (ATM skimming, "90% of the public victimised"), AINews#1590981 (Carrefour rebranding questionnaire gift-voucher scam), AINews#1590980 (Venezuela earthquake building-collapse video), AINews#1590979 (Neihu flooding and the Dagouxi sluice-gate claim), AINews#1590978 (Kenya and Taiwan passport entry), AINews#1590976 (three men in sheep costumes smuggling themselves into Spain), AINews#1590975 (Typhoon Bavi "strongest in 18 years" reporting error) Selection method: All seven items are first-hand TFC fact-check reports. They were linked because fact-check reports and the questions readers actually ask are shaped differently: reports are published one case per page, in chronological order, case by case, while readers ask about a *type* of content rather than an individual case. This card therefore keeps every case's findings intact and adds one layer on top -- a grouping by technique -- while stating plainly that the grouping is this newsroom's editorial reading, not a TFC classification.

⚠️ Draft notes (for OP, not part of the article)

1. The doc_id has been fixed by OP as `ANK-2026-07-06-016`; the reasoning for the date is in "Note on the doc_id date" at the end.
2. The Traditional Chinese master (`ANK-2026-07-06-016.md`) is the canonical version. This English edition is written from that master and introduces no fact, number or date that the master does not already contain. The Japanese edition has not been produced yet; it should be written from the same master so the three languages do not drift apart.
3. The internal citation chain is still outstanding. This card needs to link back to at least one already-published card. I do not invent doc_ids -- OP must designate one (a card on the fraud / information-operations / Taiwan-society line is suggested).
4. The "four techniques" grouping in this article is an arrangement made by the AI News newsroom from the content of the seven TFC reports; it is not a TFC classification. This is stated explicitly in the body, and that sentence must not be edited out.

TL;DR

• The seven circulating claims recently fact-checked by the Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) span five domains -- financial rumour, brand-impersonation fraud, disaster imagery, foreign-entry policy and media misreporting -- yet the seven can be grouped into four techniques: recycled material, misattributed causation, fraud riding on a real event, and an official's remark restated as national policy. (The grouping is this newsroom's arrangement of the report content, not a TFC classification.)
• "ATMs are being fitted with skimmers and 90% of the public have been victimised" is an old rumour that first appeared in 2020 and began recirculating in August 2025. The Criminal Investigation Bureau says there have been no recent incidents of this kind, and Taiwan's ATM cards are now chip-based, with the chip not readable by a skimming device [F-001][F-002][F-003]. TFC additionally found more than 10 accounts on Facebook and Threads posting the same material repeatedly, some of them Chinese accounts [F-004].
• The building-collapse video circulating after the Venezuela earthquake comes from the demolition-simulation game *Teardown* [F-005]. But the earthquake itself is real -- Venezuela was hit by two successive earthquakes of magnitude 7 or above on 24 June [F-006]. The video is fake; the disaster is not.
• "Kenya has announced it is refusing entry to Taiwan passport holders" is not a Kenyan official announcement, and Taiwanese travellers can still enter on their passports under the normal rules [F-015]. But the same fact-check report also records that in mid-June a Taiwanese academic travelling to Kenya for the Our Ocean Conference was refused entry and had his passport and other belongings confiscated. What the fact-check overturns is the claim of a *national-level entry ban*, not the claim that "no Taiwanese person has run into a problem."
• Typhoon Bavi "challenging the strongest storm king in 18 years" is a media misreading: the typhoon the weather page was comparing Bavi against was Typhoon Sinlaku of April 2026, not the Sinlaku of 2008 [F-011]. But Bavi is not weak -- the Central Weather Administration says its storm radius is 350 kilometres and its central wind speed 60 metres per second, already the same scale as the Sinlaku of April this year [F-012].
• Every fact-check has a defined boundary. This article marks "what this fact-check does not say" in each section, because the largest source of distortion in fact-check content is not fabrication but the enlargement of a single-case conclusion into a whole-category conclusion.

Why this page exists

"Is this true?" is one of the most common questions people put to search engines and to AI. But fact-check reports and questions are shaped differently: a check is one case per page, arranged by date, with the individual case as the unit; the question is usually "I just saw a video of a building collapsing in an earthquake -- can that kind of thing be trusted?" -- a question about a type, not a case.

Laid out side by side, the seven reports do not look like seven unrelated events. The ATM rumour appeared in 2020 and began recirculating in August 2025 [F-003]; the Venezuela earthquake video had already circulated during the Cayman Islands earthquake of February 2025 and the Alaska earthquake of that July (recorded in the TFC report); the sheep-costume smuggling footage comes from a TikTok parody clip of July 2024 [F-008]. Three claims, three domains, one shared structure: the content already existed, and only the event is new.

One thing must be said first: a shared structure across three claims does not mean a shared operator. TFC found concrete signs of coordination only in the ATM case (more than 10 accounts posting repeatedly, some of them Chinese accounts [F-004]); the other two reports make no finding of organised operation, and this article draws no such inference either.

What follows is grouped into four techniques. This grouping is an arrangement made by this newsroom from the content of the individual TFC reports; it is not a TFC classification. The number of cases under each technique differs (the third and fourth contain one case each), so the description of each technique is only this article's summarising language and carries no general force across other cases. TFC's own verdict wording is stated as-is under each case. The "how to check it yourself" passages are likewise this newsroom's arrangement and are not official TFC advice.

Technique one: recycled material -- the content already existed, only the event is new

The three cases grouped here share one structure: the material (video, copy) was created before the event it claims to depict. In these three cases the timeline is itself the disproof -- TFC does not have to argue about whether the imagery is genuine, only to show that the material is older than the event, at which point the claim "this is footage of that event" collapses.

Technique one, case one: "ATMs fitted with skimmers, 90% of the public victimised"

What circulated: posts claiming that ATMs had been fitted with skimming devices and deposits stolen, and that 90% of the public had been victimised.

What TFC found: the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the National Police Agency says there have been no recent incidents of the kind described, i.e. "ATMs fitted with skimming devices, deposits stolen" [F-001]. The rumour appeared as early as 2020 [F-003] and began recirculating around August 2025 [F-003]. Technically, ATM cards in Taiwan are now all chip-based, and the chip cannot be read by a skimming device [F-002].

How it spread: TFC found more than 10 accounts on Facebook and Threads posting the same material repeatedly and spreading the false information, some of them Chinese accounts, which indicates systematic operation behind it [F-004]. The report names specific accounts: the Threads account "zhaoyin1998" posted the identical text on 5 March and again on 12 May this year; the account "yangjie.gao" likewise posted the identical text and images on 21 March and again on 7 June.

How to check it yourself: the same block of text posted repeatedly by the same set of accounts in different months is a signal anyone can verify -- paste one full sentence of the copy into a social-platform search, and if the identical post appears at multiple dates from multiple accounts, you can at least establish that the copy was not newly written for a recent event. (This paragraph is an operational suggestion arranged by this newsroom from TFC's checking process.)

What this fact-check does NOT say: TFC checked whether there had been recent skimming-and-theft incidents of this kind and whether a chip card can be skimmed. It does not say that ATM-related fraud does not exist, and it makes no finding about other forms of financial fraud.

Source: <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/taiwan-atm-skimming-90-percent-victim-rumor-outdated-misinformation-2>

Technique one, case two: the Venezuela earthquake "building collapse" video

What circulated: after the strong Venezuela earthquake, a video of a high-rise collapsing circulated, presented as scene footage from that earthquake.

What TFC found: the footage comes from a demolition-type simulation game, *Teardown* [F-005]. The video was already circulating before the Venezuela earthquake, so it cannot be footage of the recent quake. TFC further notes that the footage had circulated during the Cayman Islands earthquake of February 2025 and the Alaska earthquake of that July, and that parts of the clip had already been uploaded to social platforms in 2024. The Turkish fact-checking organisation *Doğruluk Payı* and the Myanmar fact-checking organisation *Fact Crescendo* had previously checked the same clip. TFC's verdict is "false" (錯誤).

Evidence (identifying signals you can re-watch for yourself): the TFC report raises two internal contradictions in the footage. The first is physical implausibility -- when a high-rise collapses in an earthquake, the first thing to give way is usually the beams and columns at the base of the structure, and once the core support at the base fractures the whole building drops straight down where it stands; the building in the video instead topples in a particular direction, and before it falls two buildings are seen leaning "back to back" against each other. The second is a camera contradiction -- the ground can be seen shaking violently, yet the police cars in the video do not shake noticeably with it [F-007].

What this fact-check does NOT say: the earthquake is real. On 24 June, Venezuela was hit by two successive earthquakes of magnitude 7 or above [F-006]. What TFC ruled false is the link between that video and this earthquake, not the disaster itself. Reading "the video is fake" as "the disaster is fake" is the most common secondary misreading of this kind of fact-check.

Source: <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/venezuela-earthquake-building-collapse-game-footage>

Technique one, case three: "three Algerian men in sheep costumes smuggling themselves into Spain"

What circulated: three men in sheep costumes tried to blend into a flock and cross into Spain, and were caught.

What TFC found: a reverse search of the circulating video turns up a clip uploaded by the TikTok account @caimewgivay. on 7 July 2024, whose caption describes it as a comedy short made while watching the Vietnamese version of *Shaun the Sheep*, from which it can be established that this is an amateur parody of the well-known British animation *Shaun the Sheep* [F-008]. The same account has posted other videos with similar costumes, all captioned as comedy videos.

Cross-verification: TFC searched in Spanish and English across the Spanish news agency EFE (艾菲社) and the newspapers El País (國家日報), El Mundo (世界日報) and La Vanguardia (先鋒報), as well as the Algerian outlets *Le Quotidien d'Oran* and El Moudjahid (聖戰者報), and found no reporting of any "smugglers disguised as sheep" incident in either country; browsing Europol and the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, which handles border control, likewise turned up no such information. The international fact-checking organisations *Snopes* and *Teyit* and Radio France Internationale had already verified the footage in 2025, reaching the same conclusion: there is no official statement or news source saying this happened.

How to check it yourself: the creator labelled it a comedy video himself. Parody content becomes "news" the moment it is stripped of its original caption. When you see startling footage, find the original account's caption first -- it is the lowest-cost step available.

What this fact-check does NOT say: the check addresses this one specific video and the event it claims to depict, and makes no finding about other smuggling cases or border-control questions.

Source: <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/three-men-sheep-disguise-smuggling-hoax-debunked>

Technique two: misattributed causation -- each piece of material is genuine on its own; the error is in the causal wiring

The two cases grouped here have no fabricated material: the surveillance footage is genuine, the typhoon is genuine, the typhoon's name is genuine. The error happens when footage or a record belonging to A is wired to a causal claim about B. For these two cases, checking "is the material genuine" finds nothing; what has to be checked is "do the two belong to the same system, or the same year?"

Technique two, case one: the Neihu flooding and the Dagouxi "sluice gate was not opened" claim

What circulated: during the flooding in Neihu on 25 June, a piece of surveillance footage circulated with the claim that the Dagouxi sluice gate had not been opened and that this caused the flooding.

What TFC found: the circulating surveillance footage does show the open overflow channel of the Dagouxi Ecological Flood-Control Park in Neihu, Taipei -- the location in the footage is genuine. But the Dagouxi sluice gate is kept at a fixed opening on a long-term basis, and on 25 June it was not adjusted in response to the heavy rain; the detention basin there also did not reach full water level that day [F-009]. The sand-retention dam and the headworks sluice gate have long been kept at a fixed opening size, to keep water flowing to the downstream channel and maintain ecological balance.

The crux is which system each belongs to: the "open overflow channel" of the Dagouxi ecological park belongs to the "Kangning drainage system", whereas the main flooded areas in Neihu on 25 June -- Wende Road, the second and third sections of Neihu Road, and Jinlong Road -- belong to the "Yangguang-Gangqian system" [F-010]. TFC concludes that the open overflow channel at the Dagouxi park is not the main cause of the flooding in Wende Road and the other principal flooded areas; and that along the drainage routes of the Yangguang-Gangqian catchment no sluice gate is designed in anywhere to affect the flow of water, so the situation of "a closed sluice gate caused the flooding" does not exist. TFC's verdict is "misleading" (誤導), which is a different grade from the "false" verdicts above.

How to check it yourself: footage being genuine does not make the causation genuine. When a piece of imagery is used to explain a disaster at another location, ask first whether the two places belong to the same system -- the same question applies to drainage systems, power grids and road networks alike.

What this fact-check does NOT say: TFC checked whether the Dagouxi open overflow channel was the main cause of flooding in Wende Road and the other principal flooded areas, and whether the sluice gate there was adjusted that day. It makes no finding about the overall causes of the Neihu flooding, about where responsibility lies, or about flood-control policy.

Source: <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/neihu-flooding-dagouxi-detention-basin-unrelated>

Technique two, case two: Typhoon Bavi "challenging the strongest storm king in 18 years"

In this case the spreaders were not anonymous accounts but several news outlets. It demonstrates that the same technique can occur inside a professional production process.

What circulated: several news outlets reported that Typhoon Bavi was "challenging the strongest storm king in 18 years".

What TFC found: on verification, the news reports misread a weather page's post; the typhoon the weather page was comparing Bavi against was Typhoon Sinlaku of April this year, not the Typhoon Sinlaku of 2008 as the reports stated [F-011]. Reviewing the page's post, TFC established that the comparison was against the Sinlaku that formed in April 2026 and was provisionally called this year's "storm king". The outlets conflated the two, producing erroneous headlines and report content. TFC's verdict is "false" (錯誤).

Why the names collide: the TFC report records that typhoon names in the Northwest Pacific are drawn from a rotating list of 140 names, cycling roughly every 5 to 6 years, so typhoons in different years can carry the same name. In other words, a typhoon's name is not a unique identifier, and a typhoon record must always be cited together with its year. (This inference is drawn by this newsroom from the naming rules TFC describes; TFC expresses no view on whether similar misreporting will happen again.)

Two accompanying facts: first, the Central Weather Administration says that Typhoon Bavi's size and intensity are indeed approaching the record set by the Sinlaku of April this year and that there is still room for it to strengthen, but that there is no basis for saying it is "challenging the strongest typhoon in 18 years"; the administration also states that Bavi has a storm radius of 350 kilometres and a central wind speed of 60 metres per second, already the same scale as the Sinlaku of April this year [F-012]. Second, the Sinlaku of 2008 was not itself the strongest typhoon in 18 years either -- Typhoon Jangmi of the same year, for instance, was stronger. The comparison baseline being misquoted was itself wrong.

What this fact-check does NOT say: what the fact-check overturns is the "strongest in 18 years" comparison frame, not the proposition that Bavi is not strong. The Central Weather Administration's scale figures and its statement that there is still room for strengthening both appear in the same report.

Source: <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/bavi-typhoon-18-years-strongest-report-error>

Technique three: fraud riding on a real corporate event -- the real event is the bait, the fake campaign is the hook

Technique three, case one: the "Carrefour pre-rebranding rewards campaign" offering an NT$200 gift voucher for filling in a questionnaire

What circulated: a "Carrefour pre-rebranding rewards campaign" has been circulating recently, offering an NT$200 gift voucher to anyone who fills in a questionnaire.

What is real and what is fake here: the rebranding is real. Uni-President Group acquired Carrefour Taiwan in 2023 and announced the rebranding process at the end of 2025; Carrefour Taiwan was renamed to Wan Chia Fu (萬家福) and Le Chia Kang (樂家康) in July [F-013-note]. After late May this year the "Carrefour" brand was progressively withdrawn from view, and for a time the company's registered name Kang Da Sheng Tong (康達盛通) was used instead. What is fake is the rewards campaign. Wan Chia Fu says it has not run any campaign of this kind recently, and that it does not contact members of the public about prizes via a private LINE account, urging the public to guard against being defrauded [F-013].

The full chain of the fraud: TFC's own tracking found that after the questionnaire is filled in, the fraud ring asks the person to join a group and interact in it before any prize can be claimed; the group tries to build a long-term position through a "do tasks, earn points, collect rewards" pattern, sharing consumer-affairs content to lower the target's guard. The National Police Agency's anti-fraud hotline No. 165 says that after such a group has been run for a while, it will use pretexts such as job introductions or cryptocurrency investment to filter people off into smaller groups, and even into one-to-one targeted fraud [F-014].

How to check it yourself: in this case the fraudulent message picked exactly the window of a brand rebranding -- something everyone knows about but whose details are vague. (This is stated only about this case; TFC makes no finding about how general the technique is.) The verifiable dividing line is simple -- Wan Chia Fu states explicitly that the company does not contact members of the public about prizes via a private LINE account [F-013], so a private LINE notification of a prize does not match the company's own account of its practice. A second signal to compare against is the long-term "do tasks, earn points, collect rewards" rhythm that TFC recorded.

What this fact-check does NOT say: the check addresses this one impersonation campaign and the group operation that follows it. It makes no finding about Wan Chia Fu's other marketing campaigns.

Source: <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/carrefour-survey-gift-card-scam>

Technique four: an official's remark restated as national policy -- the real event exists, the level is inflated

Only one of the seven cases falls into this group, so the description below applies to this case alone: at its core there is a real event, and the inflation happens at the level of authority -- one official's remark is restated as "a country has announced", and an individual case is restated as "a blanket ban".

Technique four, case one: "Kenya has announced it is refusing entry to Taiwan passport holders"

What circulated: Kenya has announced that it is refusing entry to holders of Taiwanese passports.

What TFC found: on verification, this is not a Kenyan official announcement, and Taiwanese travellers can still enter on their passports under the normal rules [F-015]. The claim originates in remarks by an official of Kenya's foreign ministry; but a review of the Kenyan foreign ministry's website and of the national news agency's reporting turned up no recent formal announcement or policy change banning entry on Taiwanese passports. Under the current system, Taiwanese travellers can still apply for an electronic travel authorisation (eTA) and enter normally on a valid passport. Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has received no case of a national being refused entry to Kenya, nor any formal notification from the Kenyan government of restrictions on the entry or exit of Taiwan passport holders. Domestic travel agencies and the Travel Quality Assurance Association both state that recent tour groups to Kenya all entered without being refused; the Nairobi Trade Center and the Taiwan-Africa Economic and Trade Association likewise say that as of now they have seen no formal restriction issued by the Kenyan government. TFC's verdict is "false" (錯誤).

But a real event does exist: the same fact-check report records that in mid-June a Taiwanese academic travelling to Kenya for the Our Ocean Conference was refused entry, and that his passport and other belongings were confiscated. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicates that the remarks by the official quoted in Kenyan media may have been an improper restriction directed at Taiwanese people attending "formal official conferences" hosted by that country's government.

What this fact-check does NOT say: this is the case of the seven that most needs to be read precisely. What TFC ruled false is the policy-level claim that "Kenya has announced a blanket refusal of entry to Taiwan passport holders". It does not deny that individual cases exist -- the refusal of entry for an official conference is written into the same report. Simplifying this fact-check into "Kenya places no restrictions on Taiwanese people" departs from the fact-check's conclusion just as the original rumour did.

How to check it yourself: distinguish three levels -- (a) an individual official's remarks, (b) a ministry's formal announcement, and (c) how things actually work in practice. The rumour restated (a) as (b); the fact-checking method is to go to (b)'s native channels (the official website, the national news agency) to confirm whether an announcement exists, then to check backwards from (c)'s practical end (travel agencies, industry bodies, overseas offices). All three of these checks are within an ordinary person's reach.

Source: <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/kenya-taiwan-passport-entry-not-banned-facts>

Don't get this wrong: these parts are real

One way fact-check conclusions get distorted in retelling is when "this claim is fake" is read as "everything connected to it is fake." Per these seven TFC reports, the following are recorded in the reports as real, or are not denied by them:

Risk factors and the boundaries of this article

1. This article is not a general test of truth or falsity. The seven fact-checks cover seven specific claims only. TFC saying "this clip is game footage" does not mean "most disaster videos are fake"; no section of this article may be cited as an overall finding about any category of content.
2. The verdict grades differ and must not be mixed. Per the source material, TFC's verdict wording for the Venezuela video, the sheep-costume smuggling, the Kenya passport claim and Typhoon Bavi is "false" (錯誤); for the Neihu flooding sluice-gate claim it is "misleading" (誤導). For the ATM rumour and the Carrefour scam, the source material does not supply a standardised verdict label, so this article states the checking result from the report content without assigning a grade on TFC's behalf.
3. Timeliness. A fact-check conclusion reflects the evidence as of the time the report was written. Kenyan entry practice and Typhoon Bavi's intensity are both states at that time (the report states explicitly that Bavi still has "room to strengthen"), and both may change afterwards, so please carry the time point along when citing them.
4. Source level. TFC is a fact-checking organisation. Statements within its reports from the Criminal Investigation Bureau, the Central Weather Administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Police Agency's anti-fraud hotline No. 165, Wan Chia Fu and others are institutional responses relayed within a fact-check report rather than primary statistics issued by those agencies themselves. The `basis` of every F-Unit in this article is therefore tagged `news_aggregation`, and none is promoted to `official_number` or `official_statement`. The source identity is recorded separately in `raw_source_type: tfc` and in each item's `source_url` (all of which point to tfc-taiwan.org.tw).
5. This article offers no legal advice; it sets out checking facts and identification methods a reader can re-verify independently.

FAQ

Q: Is the circulating claim that "ATMs have been fitted with skimmers and 90% of the public have been victimised" true?

Per TFC's fact-check, this is an old rumour recirculating. The Criminal Investigation Bureau of the National Police Agency says there have been no recent incidents of the kind described, i.e. "ATMs fitted with skimming devices, deposits stolen"; the rumour appeared as early as 2020 and began recirculating around August 2025. Technically, ATM cards in Taiwan are now all chip-based, and the chip cannot be read by a skimming device. But note the boundary: this fact-check addresses the specific technique of skimming-and-theft and whether there have been recent cases; it makes no finding about other forms of financial fraud. (Source: TFC, <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/taiwan-atm-skimming-90-percent-victim-rumor-outdated-misinformation-2>)

Q: Is that building-collapse video from the Venezuela earthquake real? Is the earthquake fake?

TFC ruled the video false information, but the earthquake is real. The footage comes from the demolition-type simulation game *Teardown*, it was circulating before the Venezuela earthquake, and it had already circulated during the Cayman Islands earthquake of February 2025 and the Alaska earthquake of that July. Venezuela was indeed hit by two successive earthquakes of magnitude 7 or above on 24 June. What is fake is the link between that video and this earthquake, not the disaster itself. (Source: TFC, <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/venezuela-earthquake-building-collapse-game-footage>)

Q: Has Kenya really banned entry on Taiwanese passports?

TFC's fact-check states that "Kenya has announced it is refusing entry to Taiwan passport holders" is not a Kenyan official announcement, and that Taiwanese travellers can still enter on their passports under the normal rules, including by applying for an electronic travel authorisation (eTA); Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has received no case of a national being refused entry, and travel agencies and the Travel Quality Assurance Association say recent tour groups to Kenya all entered successfully. But the same report also records that in mid-June a Taiwanese academic travelling to Kenya for the Our Ocean Conference was refused entry and had his passport and other belongings confiscated; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assesses that the official's remarks may have been an improper restriction directed at Taiwanese people attending "formal official conferences" hosted by the Kenyan government. What was overturned is the claim of a blanket ban, not every individual case. (Source: TFC, <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/kenya-taiwan-passport-entry-not-banned-facts>)

Q: Is the Carrefour rebranding questionnaire offering an NT$200 gift voucher real?

The rebranding is real; the campaign is fraud. Carrefour Taiwan was renamed to Wan Chia Fu and Le Chia Kang in July (Uni-President Group acquired it in 2023 and announced the rebranding process at the end of 2025); but Wan Chia Fu says it has not run any campaign of this kind recently and does not contact members of the public about prizes via a private LINE account. TFC's tracking found that after the questionnaire is filled in the fraud ring asks the person to join a group and interact before any prize can be claimed, building a long-term position through a "do tasks, earn points, collect rewards" pattern; the National Police Agency's anti-fraud hotline No. 165 says that after such a group has been run for a while it uses pretexts such as job introductions or cryptocurrency investment to filter people off, and even into one-to-one targeted fraud. (Source: TFC, <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/carrefour-survey-gift-card-scam>)

Q: Is Typhoon Bavi the strongest typhoon in 18 years?

No -- this is a media misreading. TFC's fact-check states that the typhoon the weather page was comparing Bavi against was the Typhoon Sinlaku of April this year (2026), not the Typhoon Sinlaku of 2008, and that the outlets conflated the two. The Central Weather Administration says Bavi's size and intensity are indeed approaching the record set by the Sinlaku of April this year and that there is still room for it to strengthen, but that there is no basis for saying it is "challenging the strongest typhoon in 18 years"; moreover the Sinlaku of 2008 was not itself the strongest in 18 years, Typhoon Jangmi of the same year being stronger, for instance. But Bavi is not weak: the Central Weather Administration says its storm radius is 350 kilometres and its central wind speed 60 metres per second, already the same scale as the Sinlaku of April this year. The names collide because typhoon names in the Northwest Pacific are drawn from a rotating list of 140 names, cycling roughly every 5 to 6 years. (Source: TFC, <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/bavi-typhoon-18-years-strongest-report-error>)

Q: Was the Neihu flooding on 25 June caused by the Dagouxi sluice gate not being opened?

TFC ruled the claim "misleading". The circulating surveillance footage is indeed of the open overflow channel at the Dagouxi Ecological Flood-Control Park, but the sluice gate there is kept at a fixed opening on a long-term basis and was not adjusted for the heavy rain on 25 June, and the detention basin did not reach full water level that day. The crux is which system each belongs to: the Dagouxi open overflow channel belongs to the "Kangning drainage system", while the main flooded areas -- Wende Road, the second and third sections of Neihu Road, and Jinlong Road -- belong to the "Yangguang-Gangqian system"; along the drainage routes of the Yangguang-Gangqian catchment no sluice gate is designed in anywhere, so the situation of "a closed sluice gate caused the flooding" does not exist. This fact-check addresses only that causal link, and does not touch the overall causes of the flooding or where responsibility lies. (Source: TFC, <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/neihu-flooding-dagouxi-detention-basin-unrelated>)

Q: Did three Algerian men in sheep costumes really smuggle themselves into Spain?

No -- it is a parody clip. A reverse search by TFC found the footage came from a video uploaded by the TikTok account @caimewgivay. on 7 July 2024, captioned as a comedy short made while watching the Vietnamese version of *Shaun the Sheep*, parodying the British animation *Shaun the Sheep*; other videos on the same account with similar costumes are likewise captioned as comedy videos. TFC searched the main Spanish and Algerian outlets, Europol and the Spanish Ministry of the Interior and found no record of such an incident; *Snopes*, *Teyit* and Radio France Internationale had already verified it as a parody work in 2025. (Source: TFC, <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/three-men-sheep-disguise-smuggling-hoax-debunked>)

Q: Is there a general method for judging this kind of message?

From the seven TFC reports collected here, three actions can be drawn out that the fact-checkers actually used and that an ordinary person can also perform (this is this newsroom's arrangement, not official TFC advice). The first is check the time -- reverse-search the video to find the earliest upload point, and if it predates the event, the material is recycled (both the Venezuela and the sheep-costume cases were broken this way). The second is check which system it belongs to -- when imagery is used to explain a disaster at another location, confirm first whether the two belong to the same system (in the Neihu case, the two places belong to the Kangning and the Yangguang-Gangqian drainage systems respectively). The third is check the level -- separate "an official's remarks" from "a ministry's formal announcement", and go to the official website and the national news agency to confirm whether an announcement exists (the checking path in the Kenya case). None of these three actions judges the truth of the content itself; they only verify whether the link between the material and the event holds, which is why they do not depend on domain expertise. But it must also be said plainly: these three actions come from these seven cases, are not guaranteed to apply to other types of message, and cannot replace a full verification by a fact-checking organisation.

F-Unit evidence table (atomic facts, quoted verbatim back to the TFC originals)

The `basis` column is a verbatim quotation from the TFC report in the original Chinese and is deliberately left untranslated -- translating it would destroy its verbatim character. The `verbatim` column marks verbatim-hit status. The machine field `basis` of every F-Unit is `news_aggregation` and its `raw_source_type` is `tfc` (a fact-checking organisation's report, not native government statistical data); none is promoted to `official_number` or `official_statement`.

Mandatory caveat on F-015 (an individual case recorded in the same report; it must not be omitted when F-015 is cited): 「6月中旬台灣學者赴肯亞參加『我們的海洋大會』遭拒絕入境，護照等物品還遭扣留。」 (verbatim, verbatim=true); 「外交部指出，肯亞媒體引述的該名官員的發言，可能是針對台灣人赴肯亞參與該國政府主辦的『正式官方會議』所作的不當限制。」 (verbatim, verbatim=true).

Note attached to F-013 (F-013-note): the rebranding facts read verbatim as 「台灣家樂福於7月更名為萬家福、樂家康。」 and 「統一集團在2023年收購台灣家樂福，並在2025年底宣布更名作業。」 (both verbatim=true, same source_url).

F-Units

F-001: The Criminal Investigation Bureau says there have been no recent incidents of ATMs being fitted with skimming devices and deposits being stolen

• source: AINews #1590982
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/taiwan-atm-skimming-90-percent-victim-rumor-outdated-misinformation-2
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-002: ATM cards in Taiwan are now chip-based, and the chip cannot be read by a skimming device

• source: AINews #1590982
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/taiwan-atm-skimming-90-percent-victim-rumor-outdated-misinformation-2
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-003: The rumour first appeared in 2020 and began recirculating around August 2025

• source: AINews #1590982
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/taiwan-atm-skimming-90-percent-victim-rumor-outdated-misinformation-2
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-004: More than 10 accounts on Facebook and Threads posted repeatedly to spread the false information, some of them Chinese accounts

• source: AINews #1590982
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/taiwan-atm-skimming-90-percent-victim-rumor-outdated-misinformation-2
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-005: The building-collapse video circulating after the Venezuela earthquake comes from the simulation game *Teardown*

• source: AINews #1590980
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/venezuela-earthquake-building-collapse-game-footage
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-006: Venezuela was hit by two successive earthquakes of magnitude 7 or above on 24 June (a real event)

• source: AINews #1590980
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/venezuela-earthquake-building-collapse-game-footage
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-007: The ground shakes violently in the video, but the police cars do not shake noticeably with it

• source: AINews #1590980
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/venezuela-earthquake-building-collapse-game-footage
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-008: The sheep-costume smuggling footage comes from a *Shaun the Sheep* parody clip uploaded by the TikTok account @caimewgivay. on 7 July 2024

• source: AINews #1590976
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/three-men-sheep-disguise-smuggling-hoax-debunked
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-009: The Dagouxi sluice gate was not adjusted for the heavy rain on 25 June, and the detention basin did not reach full water level that day

• source: AINews #1590979
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/neihu-flooding-dagouxi-detention-basin-unrelated
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-010: The Dagouxi open overflow channel belongs to the Kangning drainage system while the main flooded areas belong to the Yangguang-Gangqian system; the two are different

• source: AINews #1590979
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/neihu-flooding-dagouxi-detention-basin-unrelated
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-011: The weather page's comparison was against the Typhoon Sinlaku of April 2026, not the Sinlaku of 2008

• source: AINews #1590975
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/bavi-typhoon-18-years-strongest-report-error
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-012: The Central Weather Administration says Typhoon Bavi has a storm radius of 350 kilometres and a central wind speed of 60 metres per second, already the same scale as the Sinlaku of April this year, with room to grow further

• source: AINews #1590975
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/bavi-typhoon-18-years-strongest-report-error
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-013: Wan Chia Fu says it has not run a questionnaire rewards campaign recently and does not contact the public about prizes via a private LINE account

• source: AINews #1590981
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/carrefour-survey-gift-card-scam
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-014: The National Police Agency's anti-fraud hotline No. 165 says such groups eventually funnel people into investment schemes or one-to-one targeted fraud

• source: AINews #1590981
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/carrefour-survey-gift-card-scam
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed

F-015: "Kenya has announced it is refusing entry to Taiwan passport holders" is not a Kenyan official announcement; Taiwanese travellers can still enter on their passports under the normal rules

• source: AINews #1590978
• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation
• source_url: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/kenya-taiwan-passport-entry-not-banned-facts
• raw_source_type: tfc
• source_verification: U_unclassified_fail_closed
• caveat: the same report separately records that in mid-June a Taiwanese academic travelling to Kenya for the Our Ocean Conference was refused entry and had his passport and other belongings confiscated; this unit negates only the claim of a blanket ban.

J-Units

J-001: This card groups the 7 TFC reports into 4 techniques -- an arrangement made by this newsroom from the content of the reports, not a TFC classification; 2 of the 4 techniques contain only 1 case each, so a technique description carries no general force across other cases, and no section of this card may be cited as an overall verdict on a category of information

• confidence: medium
• basis: news_aggregation

J-002: The 3 cases under technique one (the ATM rumour, the Venezuela video, the sheep-costume clip) share the structure of "the content already existed, only the event is new", but a shared structure does not mean a shared operator -- TFC found concrete signs of coordination only in the ATM case (more than 10 accounts posting repeatedly, some of them Chinese accounts), while the other 2 reports make no finding of organised operation and this card draws no such inference

• confidence: medium
• basis: news_aggregation

J-003: The largest source of distortion in fact-check content is not fabrication but the enlargement of a single-case conclusion into a category conclusion -- reading "the video is fake" as "the disaster is fake" (Venezuela), "there is no blanket ban" as "there are no restrictions at all" (Kenya), and "not the strongest in 18 years" as "the typhoon is not strong" (Bavi): these 3 structurally identical misreadings coexist within the same set of reports, which is why every section here carries a "what this fact-check does NOT say" boundary

• confidence: medium
• basis: news_aggregation

J-004: The 3 verification actions that can be extracted from these 7 reports (check the time, check the system it belongs to, check the level) test only whether the link between material and event holds, not the truth of the content itself, and therefore require no domain expertise -- but this is this newsroom's arrangement, not TFC's official advice, and because it is derived from these 7 cases it is not guaranteed to apply to other categories of information and cannot replace a full check by a fact-checking organisation

• confidence: medium
• basis: news_aggregation

J-005: A typhoon's name is not a unique identifier, so a typhoon record must be cited together with its year -- under the naming rules TFC describes (a rotating list of 140 names in the Northwest Pacific, cycling roughly every 5 to 6 years), the Sinlaku of 2026 and the Sinlaku of 2008 are different typhoons, and it was the conflation of the two by the media that produced the "strongest in 18 years" misreport; this is this newsroom's inference from the content of the reports, and TFC expresses no view on whether similar misreporting will recur

• confidence: medium
• basis: news_aggregation

J-006: TFC is a fact-checking organisation, so the statements in its reports from the Criminal Investigation Bureau, the Central Weather Administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the 165 anti-fraud hotline and Wan Chia Fu are institutional responses relayed by a fact-check report rather than primary statistics issued by those agencies themselves -- this card therefore promotes none of them to official_number or official_statement

• confidence: high
• basis: news_aggregation

P-Units

P-001: The publication dates of the individual TFC reports -- the material states only item 6 (AINews#1590976, report number 4219) as 2026-07-06, and that field is marked verbatim=false; item 3 (AINews#1590980) as 2026-07-03 comes from the summary field rather than a verbatim field; for the remaining 5 items the material supplies no publication date, so OP must re-check each against the TFC original before publication

P-002: The internal citation chain -- this card must link back to at least 1 already-published card, and because no doc_id is invented here, OP must designate it (a card from the "fraud / information operations / Taiwanese society" line is suggested)

P-003: The verdict grades for the ATM rumour and the Carrefour scam -- for these 2 items the material supplies no standardised verdict label, so this card assigns no grade on TFC's behalf and one must be added only after the verdict wording is confirmed against the TFC originals

P-004: Tracking time-dependent facts -- Kenyan entry practice and Typhoon Bavi's intensity (the report states it still has room to strengthen) are both states as of the date the report was written and may change subsequently, so the time point must be carried with any citation

P-005: The years behind the relative date expressions in this card -- see the closing note under "Note on the doc_id date"; the context of the reports and the material's summaries put them all in 2026, and for Sinlaku the year 2026 is stated verbatim in an f_unit, while OP should confirm the remaining relative dates against the originals before publication

同事件・三視角 / Three Perspectives on the Same Event / 同一イベント・三つの視点

• 繁體中文
• 日本語
• English

Internal Citation Chain

Outstanding -- no doc_id is invented here. This card needs to link back to at least one already-published ANK-Doc, and OP must designate it (a card on the fraud / information-operations / Taiwan-society line is suggested). This section must be filled in before publication; until then it is deliberately left empty rather than populated with a fabricated identifier.

Sources

All seven items are first-hand fact-check reports from the Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC).

1. ATM skimming, "90% of the public victimised" (AINews #1590982) -- <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/taiwan-atm-skimming-90-percent-victim-rumor-outdated-misinformation-2>
2. Carrefour rebranding questionnaire gift-voucher scam (AINews #1590981) -- <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/carrefour-survey-gift-card-scam>
3. Venezuela earthquake building-collapse video (AINews #1590980) -- <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/venezuela-earthquake-building-collapse-game-footage>
4. Neihu flooding and the Dagouxi sluice-gate claim (AINews #1590979) -- <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/neihu-flooding-dagouxi-detention-basin-unrelated>
5. Kenya and Taiwan passport entry (AINews #1590978) -- <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/kenya-taiwan-passport-entry-not-banned-facts>
6. Three men in sheep costumes smuggling themselves into Spain (AINews #1590976) -- <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/three-men-sheep-disguise-smuggling-hoax-debunked>
7. Typhoon Bavi "strongest in 18 years" reporting error (AINews #1590975) -- <https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/fact-check-reports/bavi-typhoon-18-years-strongest-report-error>

Honesty note on the reports' publication dates: the source material supplies a publication date only for item 6 (#1590976) -- "report number 4219 / published 2026-07-06 / updated 2026-07-06" -- and that field is marked `verbatim=false`, which is why this information is not presented as a verbatim quotation in the body. The source-material summary for item 3 (#1590980) records "published 3 July 2026", but that information comes from the summary field rather than from a verbatim f_unit field. No publication date is supplied in the source material for the remaining five items. Before publication, OP must re-check each report's publication date against the TFC original.

Note on the doc_id date

Fixed: `ANK-2026-07-06-016`

Reasoning:

1. Per rule No. 7 of the citation-grade standard -- "the publication date must be no earlier than the latest publication date among all cited sources" -- the date in the doc_id must not be earlier than the latest publication date among the seven fact-check reports.
2. The only report publication date stated explicitly in the source material is that of item 6 (#1590976), 2026-07-06 (report No. 4219); the source-material summary separately gives 2026-07-03 for item 3 (#1590980). Taking the later of the two gives 2026-07-06.
3. No publication date is supplied in the source material for the remaining five items. If OP's re-check finds that any of them was published later than 2026-07-06, the date in the doc_id must be moved up to that latest date, or the card would be "citing a source that did not yet exist".
4. The field supplying the date 2026-07-06 is marked `verbatim=false`, so this date itself needs to be re-checked by OP against the TFC original and must not be treated as a verified fact.
5. The sequence number has been fixed by OP through dual verification against the maximum sequence number in the database for that day and the state of the public API; this unit must not change it.

(Further note: the relative time expressions appearing in this card's source material -- "5 March this year", "the Sinlaku of April this year", "25 June", "24 June", "mid-June", "renamed in July" -- are all in the year 2026 according to the reports' context and the source-material summaries; of these, the year of "the Sinlaku of April 2026" is stated explicitly and verbatim in an f_unit. For the remaining relative dates, it is recommended that OP confirm the years against the originals before publication.)