The High Court on Wednesday handed down a 15-year sentence to Tu Po-wen (杜博文), 45, for a string of homosexual assaults committed against models in Taiwan and China.
The ruling can be appealed.
Police said Tu was notorious for his use of “date rape” drugs mixed into drinks to render people incapacitated or unconscious, when Tu would commit sexual assaults.
Before he was arrested two years ago, authorities in Taiwan and China tagged him as a “sex predator of male models,” with police records saying he raped at least 11 men, although there are likely far more victims, as Tu had traveled to Japan and Vietnam.
Police arrested Tu at his home in New Taipei City in 2014 based on evidence provided by Chinese public security agencies, as Tu was wanted for rape and in connection to the drug overdose death of Xiang Hai (項海), 24, a rising young star in the China’s modeling industry.
At that time, the arrest was touted as a successful collaboration between Taiwan and China according to the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (海峽兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議), with officers from both sides working together on the case.
Xiang’s death in February 2014 led to a police investigation in Wuhan, China, with forensic evidence from the crime scene sent to Taiwan to bolster the case against Tu.
In August last year, Taipei’s Shilin District Court found Tu guilty of using illegal drugs and sexual assault before Xiang’s death and handed him a 18-and-a-half-year prison term in the first ruling.
Taiwanese authorities had a file on him dating to 2006, suspecting Tu of surfing dating Web sites to make contact with men.
He was reported to police over a sex crime after Tu allegedly mixed drugs into a glass of beer and raped his date after he fell unconscious.
Tu reached an out-of-court settlement in that case and moved to China.
After his latest arrest, Tu said he was taking advantage of a legal loophole, with Chinese law not worded explicitly regarding homosexual acts.
Tu said he believed his actions did not constitute rape.
Chinese investigators said Tu posed as a TV producer scouting for talent for entertainment shows, enticing aspiring Chinese male models to meetings then taking them to a hotel room the on pretense of interviews or photo shoots.
Chinese authorities began to track Tu when a man surnamed Xu (許) in Guangzhou, China, reported to police that he met with Tu in September 2011 after being promised a role in a TV commercial, but he lost consciousness after drinking a beer, and believed that he had been raped.
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