Olympic gold medal winner in taekwondo, Chu Mu-yen (
Police said Chu started receiving phone calls from a criminal group on April 24, demanding he pay them NT$3 million or they would do him and his family harm.
Chu said that he paid NT$1.1 million on April 29, but he was cheated because the criminals continued to threaten him.
Chu told police that stones were thrown at his parents' house in Taoyuan on Saturday morning, breaking windows. He reported the matter to the police because his parents were frightened, he said.
Some Chinese-language newspapers speculated yesterday why Chu did not report the case to the police in the first place. They said Chu might have been blackmailed because he went to a hostess bar and owed the establishment a lot of money.
The newspapers said Chu might have had sex with a bar girl and was then threatened to make him pay more money.
Police yesterday said they did not know whether Chu was cheated in a hostess bar, but they are investigating the matter.
Chu yesterday denied to reporters that he was cheated and threatened in a hostess bar and said, "I never went to a hostess bar and I paid the money for my family's security."
Chu told police that at least three people have been calling him -- a woman, a man who speaks fluent Taiwanese and a man that appeared to be from Hong Kong.
Police said that Chu received a NT$10 million reward from the nation for winning a gold medal in last year's Athens Olympics, and the criminal group therefore probably knew he had a large amount of money.
Chu and Chen Shih-hsin (陳詩欣) won two of the country's first Olympic gold medals in the taekwondo competition during the Athens Games.
Chu is a graduate student at the National College of Physical Education and Sports.
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