A US model flew to Taiwan to sue a Taiwanese man for allegedly using his photos to lure up to 20 women into sex and defraud others.
“I am shocked. How could he do such a thing?” Richie Kul, 29, told reporters in Taipei yesterday. “Violating the copyright of my photo is a small thing. What is serious is his using my photos to cheat women. My heart goes out to all the victims.”
Kul said he learned about the Taiwanese man’s activity after a friend visited Taiwan and read the news.
“Many friends told me not to come to Taiwan [to file the lawsuit], but I insisted on coming here because I don’t want a repeat of the crime,” the Chinese-language Apple Daily quoted him as saying.
It is not clear when Kul will file the lawsuit and how much in damages he will seek from the alleged Taiwanese swindler.
Kul is the son of a Chinese-American father and a Chinese-Thai mother.
He was born in Thailand, but emigrated to the US when he was two years old.
After graduating from Stanford University, he worked as an investment banker before taking up fashion modeling in 2004.
The Taiwanese man who used Kul’s photos to lure women, Hsu Hsien-ming (許顯名), 50, a divorcee and stock-market analyst, was arrested on Nov. 13 in Taipei.
Hsu posted photos of Kul online and used the images to lure women.
Going under the name Angor, he introduced himself as the 30-year-old son of a Taiwanese father and French mother.
He said he was on business in the US, but looking to marry a Taiwanese woman.
However, “Angor” would not consider marrying a woman unless she was prepared to have sex with his father — whom Hsu portrayed, claiming to have terminal prostate cancer and requiring constant sex to say alive.
One hundred women, ages 28 to 50, were drawn in by the scheme, about 20 of whom went on to have sex with Hsu.
Others sent money to help with breast cancer surgery for Angor’s mother, who did not exist.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS