In May 2025, Kuochun Hung, the chief operating officer of the Taiwanese media outlet Watchout, received an email from someone purporting to be Yi-Shan Chen, a well-regarded local reporter.
“Chen” claimed to be working for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and was requesting an interview with Hung on a range of topics: then pending impeachment proceedings against Taiwan’s president, the island’s divided government, and Watchout’s planned events with members of civil society groups.
Hung, whose media outlet monitors information manipulation, found the email unusual.
“The topic and questions in the invitation email [were] too entry-level for a senior journalist,” Hung told ICIJ. What’s more, Chen’s name was spelled in English, instead of the original Chinese, and the email address didn’t include ICIJ’s official domain.
Hung decided to find out more and started interacting with “Chen” on LINE, a popular messaging app in Taiwan.
The person, who used Chen’s name and photo in their handle, told Hung that an American journalist from ICIJ would meet him in Taipei for the interview and sent a link to what looked like an ICIJ webpage with the reporter’s photo. Hung noticed it wasn’t ICIJ’s real website. The fake Chen also sent Hung another link she said would direct him to a list of questions, adding: “For journalists, information security is truly very important,” a warning most journalists would find superfluous.
Hung didn’t click.
“I played stupid,” he...
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