A Taichung man jailed for skipping military service has been found innocent after evidence showed he was kidnapped and locked inside a Myanmar scam compound — a rare good outcome in a wave of trafficking cases hitting Taiwanese travelers.

• He flew to Thailand in March 2024 for a week-long trip and never came home, so a local office reported him for dodging the draft.
• A driver took him toward the Thai-Myanmar border, where two men forced him into a car and delivered him to a scam compound.
• His captors demanded a ransom of NT$500,000 from his family; his sister reported him missing to police within days.
• Messages he sent to his sister and girlfriend begging for help became the key evidence that he was not hiding abroad on purpose.
• He was rescued in May 2025, completed his military service, and an appeals court threw out the three-month sentence.

Outlook: More Taiwanese trafficking victims are likely to face the same legal trap, and courts now have a precedent for treating captivity as a defense.