Unlicensed Rogue BC Acupuncture Handicraft caught on hidden camera

A young woman with severe eczema has previously had acupuncture.

But last March in Richmond, British Columbia, a suburb south of Vancouver, as she lay on a treatment table in the home of a rogue acupuncturist, she felt something different about the two needles Wai Cheong Cheek inserted into her back.

“I explained to him that they are more painful than other injection sites,” the woman wrote in an affidavit filed in British Columbia Supreme Court as part of an effort to shut down Chick’s smuggling clinic.

“Mr Cheek explained that he was ‘pinning the needle’ and that’s why I was hurt by these two sites. I believed Mr. Cheek at the time, but his answer still confused me.”

A perennial battle

Despite her misgivings, the woman would return for more procedures — but not without a cell phone camera she had secretly planted to record Chick’s vile handiwork.

The video she shot was part of the evidence that convinced a British Columbia Supreme Court judge last week to hold Cheek in contempt of court for violating a 2016 order barring the 74-year-old from practicing acupuncture.

The decision by Justice H. William Venstra is the latest chapter in a years-long battle between Cheek and the British Columbia College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Physicians.

In 2019, a similar attempt to indict him in contempt failed despite months of surveillance of Cheek visiting residences with a bag believed to contain acupuncture supplies, and searches that turned up thousands of needles, blister packs and electrical stimulators.

At the time, the judge said the college lacked direct evidence from the patient.

“He should stop doing that”

Cheek applied for registration with the regulator in 2000, but was rejected.

According to an affidavit filed in earlier proceedings, he claimed to have studied medicine and acupuncture in China, where he worked as a doctor in a public hospital until he fled to Canada in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

He claimed that until 2014, he worked full-time six days a week as a kitchen assistant at a Thai restaurant in Vancouver.

“In my spare time, which was limited, I began helping friends and their friends with traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture,” he wrote.

In June 2016, a judge granted a permanent injunction barring Cheek from practicing acupuncture, but within months, the college received an anonymous tip that he was violating the order by visiting “numerous private residences, sometimes carrying a black Nike bag.”

The latest lawsuit includes an affidavit from one of Cheek’s neighbors, who claimed that the steady stream of cars visiting Cheek’s $2.8 million home every day stopped after a 2016 injunction.

But in May 2023, something changed.

“I started seeing about one or two cars a day,” the neighbor wrote.

“By June 2023, the number of vehicles visiting Mr. Chick’s house began to increase.”

The neighbor described more than two dozen cars — including a Porsche, a Tesla, a Mercedes and a black Bentley — seen in Chick’s driveway over two days.

“I believe this is completely unacceptable in our society today where we have rules and regulations,” he wrote in a letter to the college that is attached to the affidavit.

“Mr. Cheek … appears to have a complete disregard for what is expected of law abiding Canadian citizens and I hope you can send him a very clear message that he needs to stop doing that.”

“I came to the garbage can”

A neighbor’s complaint sparked an investigation that saw a team of nine cadets follow Cheek for almost three weeks last August as he got up before dawn every day and drove his gold Toyota Camry to a nearby shopping center where he threw plastic bags into large garbage cans of stores.

“Mr Cheek got out of his vehicle carrying a plastic bag, walked over to the rubbish bin and then dropped the plastic bag into the bin. Then he went back to his car, got into it and drove very slowly down Lansdowne. Parking in the center,” one private detective wrote.

“I kept watching the trash can. I didn’t see anyone come up or throw anything in the trash can. At 4:30 in the morning, I went to the dustbin and took out a plastic bag.”

The report, submitted as evidence, includes photos of the contents of the packages investigators recovered from the trash, including insulin syringes, blister packs of acupuncture needles, open glass vials and alcohol swabs.

Judge Wienstra said Cheek’s early-morning trash removal was “suspicious,” but said the evidence they obtained was “inconclusive” because the college had provided nothing to support a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that Cheek’s detritus was the result of acupuncture.

“It’s an acupuncture needle”

But the judge was convinced by the patient’s experience at Chick’s makeshift clinic.

She described how she entered his home and walked past the waiting room into one of two rooms down a short hallway.

“Each room had two treatment tables that were separated by sheets. Each treatment area had a bedside table that included a small electric machine and an aroma diffuser,” the woman wrote.

“Mr Cheek ordered me to lie face down on the treatment table. While in that position, I felt Mr. Cheek stick six needles into my back.”

Cheek’s lawyers argued that there was no expert evidence “whether the needles used were in fact acupuncture needles” or that the places where Cheek inserted them were those described in the “Regulations” governing the profession of acupuncture.

Veenstra was not convinced by this.

“It seems to me that if a needle is used for the purposes set out in the Regulation’s definition of “acupuncture,” it is a needle used for acupuncture and therefore an acupuncture needle,” the judge wrote.

“If an unregistered ‘therapist’ could avoid college regulation simply by using unlicensed needles and attempting to stimulate unlicensed areas of skin, then the Regulation would fail to fulfill its public interest objective.”

Chick’s lawyers did not respond to an email from CBC.

Penalties for contempt of court, ranging from fines to prison terms, will be decided at the next hearing.