Man sentenced to 18 months in teenage millionaire death case

Taipei, June 28 (CNA) A man indicted for faking a marriage with a high school student who was gifted properties worth NT$500 million (US$15.4 million) by his father but later died under suspicious circumstances was sentenced to 18 months in jail on Friday.

The verdict can be appealed.

The suspect, surnamed Hsia (夏), was found guilty by the Taichung District Court of forging documents that caused a "civil servant to make a false entry in public records" after it concluded that Hsia did not marry the 18-year-old Lai (賴) for genuine reasons but for his fortune.

Hsia "severely undermined and abused the marriage registration system established by civil law, under particularly serious circumstances," the court said in a press release outlining the verdict.

Hsia was indicted in June 2023 on the forgery charge about seven weeks after Lai's death on May 4, 2023.

Lai was found dead following a fall from Hsia's 10th-floor apartment building just two hours after the two legally registered their same-sex marriage on that May day.

According to the court, Hsia and his father, a land office agent who helped Lai's father handle his properties, witnessed Lai's father sign a contract in January 2023 gifting NT$500 million in properties to his 18-year-old son.

The process of handing over the properties was completed in late April, around the time Lai's father died after hitting his head against bathroom tiles.

Seeing an opportunity after witnessing the signing of the gift contract, Hsia cooked up the fake marriage scheme out of greed for Lai's wealth, according to the court, and he put it into action soon after the father's properties were in the son's hands.

An investigation found that before Lai's death, there was no evidence of any romantic relationship between the two men and no indication of Lai being homosexual or bisexual according to statements from his teacher and classmates, the court said in a press release.

Hsia "exhibited a high degree of malicious intent and a severe deviation from legal norms," the court said, adding that the jail term he was given could not be converted to a fine.

Despite the suspicious circumstances of Lai's death, prosecutors did not charge Hsia with murder due to a lack of evidence and settled on the forgery charge.

Lee Chin-ching (李進清), head of the court's administrative section, told reporters that the penalty given to Hsia was relatively heavy because the forgery crime he was charged with often results in sentence of four to five months in jail, commutable to a fine.

Hsu Che-wei (許哲維), the lawyer hired by Lai's mother, who was the second wife of Lai's father, applauded the court's ruling on Friday.

He also noted that following an appeal by Lai's mother, prosecutors have relaunched an investigation into the possibility that Lai was murdered.

Lai's mother is also set to file a civil suit to annul the marriage, Hsu said, which is considered critical in determining the final distribution of the NT$500 million in properties held by her son at the time of his death.

According to legal experts, whether Hsia will be able to claim an inheritance through his marriage with Lai will depend on whether civil judges decide to annul the marriage in the future.

While civil judges can independently rule on the petition of Lai's mother, they typically take criminal verdicts into consideration, experts said.