True Story:

A common criminal act in Taiwan is to "kidnap" peoples' cars. They notify the person whose car has gone missing and make arrangements for ransom, whereupon the location of the car is revealed. Most of the time, these ransoms just get paid. I've also heard of this same thing happening to people's pets.

So anyway, a scooter repairman has his car stolen. As a profession, they don't make a lot of money, so it probably wasn't even a nice car. While he's at the police station, his cell phone rings. The "carnappers" are demanding 50,000 NT ransom (about 1800$ US). He doesn't have that kind of money, so there in the police station, he wheedles them down to 10,000 NT (about $400 US). They agree, and then--get this--they give him the bank account number in to which he needs to transfer the money. I should add that this is a very common payment method here, probably second to cash in terms of popularity. But there's no such thing as an anonymous account here. They ache for paperwork to amass on every last thing.

The police, being presented with
a) a man reporting a stolen car,
b) the bank account number of the theives,
c) the cell phone number of the thieves, and
d) officers who witnessed the car being ransomed over the phone
advise the man to pay the ransom and get his car back. So he does.

What happened here? Police corruption? Indifference? Incompetence? Miscommunication? Another angle to the story that we don't know about (maybe the victim was a complete asshole in the station and got told off by weary police)? Keep in mind that this is Taiwanese-on-Taiwanese confrontation here. No foreigners getting ignored by xenophobic locals. Just an average day.

Discuss.