Taiwan has slapped Korean electronics giant Samsung with a fine for fabricating Internet forum posts that praised the company at the expense of rivals including its home-country handset competitor HTC. On Thursday, Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission said it was punishing Samsung with a $341,037 fine for deceiving consumers with its marketing activities. Taiwan’s FTC began investigating the matter in April after a local site, called TaiwanSamsungLeaks, accused the company of fabricating negative user comments on competing products. To back its claims, the site released documents from a Samsung-hired marketing firm that catalogued the different postings on Taiwan’s gadget forums. The posts included complaints about HTC’s flagship phone, and benchmarks favorably comparing Samsung handsets to those from HTC.