A Taiwanese husband who won a $17,000 civil judgment against his cheating wife and her lover has been sentenced to five months in prison for how he gathered the evidence.
The man, who has not been publicly identified, married in 2021 and lived with his parents, occasionally staying at their holiday home, according to local media reports.
In September 2023, he discovered a used toothbrush at the holiday home and reviewed security footage from a parking garage showing an unknown man driving his wife home, local media reported.
Three months later, in December 2023, he remotely activated the home’s robot vacuum cleaner via an app on his cellphone and watched the live feed. The video showed his wife changing clothes, embracing her lover, and walking around the house naked while her paramour was seen lying on the sofa.
The husband used the footage as evidence to sue his wife and her lover for infringing on his marital rights, seeking the equivalent of $68,000 in damages. The court ordered the lovers to pay him $17,000 in compensation.
His wife then countersued, accusing him of recording private footage without her consent.
The husband insisted he hadn’t meant to record his wife cheating on him, but merely to confront her. A court rejected his defense that his actions were “legally justified” because the video had already been accepted by the civil court.
Any lights or voice alerts from the robot vacuum were found insufficient to let the wife know she was being recorded.
Under Taiwanese law, secretly recording another person or disclosing their private activities or intimate information without their permission can result in up to three years in prison and a fine exceeding $9,000.
The husband was sentenced to five months in prison and fined more than $4,700 for invading his cheating wife’s privacy.