'Gay' blackmailer gets sentenced to seven years in jail

`His victims included teachers, military officers and bank managers.'

The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday sentenced a man to seven years' imprisonment for extorting money from more than 100 homosexual men over the past two years, a radio station reported.

Chou Ming-teh, 43, had been running a scam for two years in which, posing as a homosexual, he would meet men in Internet chat rooms and, as soon as the men had mentioned their names and where they worked, would threaten to tell their companies that they were gay unless they paid him money, the station said.

"Over the past two years, Chou has extorted large sums of money from more than 100 gay men, and from some of them, he extorted money several times," it said.

"Chou carried out his crimes in Kaohsiung. His victims included teachers, military officers and bank managers, but none of them dared report him to police out of fear that they would be exposed," the radio said.

Chou was arrested after a police officer heard about Chou's scheme and contacted him in the chat room, posing as a homosexual looking for sex.

"Police called on Chou's victims to come forward to testify against him, but none of them would do so for fear of exposure. It was only after the police threatened to summon them to the police station that some of them agreed to testify against Chou," the radio station said.