Prosecutors yesterday announced that billiards star Jennifer Chen (
Chen had been abroad since July after allegedly running up huge gambling debts.
Last month, Chen gave her first interviews since her disappearance while attending a billiards competition in Osaka, Japan. Taiwanese TV stations -- including TVBS and ETtoday -- conducted the interviews.
A tearful Cheng said she had been enticed by gangsters to bet on sporting events, leaving her with substantial gambling debts.
Banciao prosecutors arrested independent Jhonghe City Councilor Yu Hsiang-hsien (
However, prosecutors yesterday said that since they had established that Chen had gambled of her own free will and had not been forced by Yu or Ko to do so, they had decided to name Chen as a defendant in the gambling case.
Prosecutors said that Chen had initially not spent large sums of money to gamble on local professional baseball games. But as her gambling debts accumulated, they said, her gambling activities allegedly intensified.
Chen was alleged to have bet on World Cup soccer games to win back some money to pay her debts, but in the end she lost millions, forcing her to leave the country, prosecutors said.
Chen gambled on sporting events through online gambling Web sites run by Yu and Ko.
Prosecutors added that on July 24, Yu ordered his gangsters to negotiate with Chen and demand that she give up her Taipei residence to cover her gambling debts. Chen disappeared soon after the meeting and relocated to the US to evade bookmakers.
The 30-year-old billiards star, nicknamed "Beautiful Baby," came to prominence in the 1990s. She became the Women's Professional Billiards Association's No. 1 player in the world in March 1999.
Chen won a bronze medal for billiards at the 2001 World Games and a silver medal in last year's World Games.
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