Samsung produces great product.s But they've got a knack for doing stupid things. They just got slapped with a $340,000 fine in Taiwan for illegally paying people to trash talk HTC in forums.

Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) opened an investigation into Samsung's marketing practice last April and looked into allegations that Samsung had used a "large number of hired writers and designated employees" to "highlight the shortcomings of competing products", which happened to have HTC logos on them.

It turns out those allegations were true, and Samsung even admitted it. Now, they've got to pay a fine for it.

Just a few weeks ago, Samsung was caught bribing people to talk-up their developer competition in online forums. There's also the rigging of the Galaxy phones to perform better in benchmark tests. [AP]