The young woman suffering from severe eczema had already undergone acupuncture.

But something different was felt about the two needles Wai Cheong Chik inserted into her back as she lay on a treatment table in the dishonest acupuncturist’s home in Richmond, B.C. a suburb just south of Vancouver, last March.

“I explained to her that they were more painful than other injection sites,” the woman wrote in an affidavit filed in British Columbia Supreme Court as part of efforts to shut down the smuggling clinic. Shik.

“Mr. Chik explained that he was ‘bending the needles,’ and that’s why I was suffering regarding these two sites. At the time, I believed Mr. Chik, but I still felt disturbed by his response .”

A battle lasting several years

Despite her misgivings, the woman would return for further treatments – but not without a cell phone camera surreptitiously placed to record Chik’s infamous needlework.

The video she captured was part of a body of evidence that convinced a British Columbia Supreme Court judge last week to find Chik in contempt of court for violating a 2016 order barring the 74-year-old man practicing acupuncture without authorization.

Justice H. William Veenstra’s decision marks the latest chapter in a years-long battle between Chik and the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Acupuncturists of British Columbia.

In 2019, a similar attempt to convict him of contempt failed despite months of surveillance of Chik visiting residences with a bag purported to contain acupuncture supplies and searches that revealed thousands of needles, blister packs and electrical stimulators.

The judge, at this point, said the college lacked direct evidence from a patient.

“He needs to stop doing this.”

Chik 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 government hospital until fleeing to Canada in 1989 after the massacre of the Tiananmen Square.

He said he worked full time six days a week as a kitchen helper at a Thai restaurant in Vancouver until 2014.

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

A judge granted a permanent injunction barring Chik from practicing acupuncture in June 2016, but a few months later the university had already received an anonymous tip that he was flouting the order, visiting “numerous private residences, carrying sometimes a black Nike bag.”

The latest court filing contains an affidavit from one of Chik’s neighbors, who claimed that the constant flow of cars daily to Chik’s $2.8 million home dried up after the 2016 injunction.

But in May 2023, something changed.

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

“In June 2023, the number of vehicles traveling to Mr. Chik’s home began to increase. »

The neighbor gave descriptions of more than two dozen vehicles — including Porsches, Teslas, Mercedes and a black Bentley — seen in Chik’s driveway over two days.

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

“Mr. Chik… seems to have a complete disregard for what is expected of law-abiding citizens in Canada, and I hope you can send him a very clear message that he needs to stop doing this.”

“I approached the trash can”

The neighbor’s complaint sparked an investigation that saw a team of nine detectives follow Chik for nearly three weeks last August as he rose each day before dawn and drove his gold Toyota Camry to a shopping center neighbor where he was throwing plastic bags into the trash at a big box store.

“Mr. Chik got out of his vehicle with a plastic bag, walked towards a trash can, and then threw the plastic bag into the trash can. He then returned to his vehicle, got back into the vehicle and began driving very slowly in the Lansdowne neighborhood. Center parking lot,” wrote a private detective.

“I continued to observe the trash can. I did not see anyone approaching or throwing anything into the trash can. At 4:30 a.m., I approached the trash can and retrieved the plastic bag .”

A report submitted into evidence contains photos of the contents of the bags that investigators recovered from the trash — including insulin syringes, acupuncture needle blisters, opened glass vials and alcohol swabs.

Judge Veenstra said Chik’s early morning trash runs were “suspicious” but said the evidence they provided was “flawed” because the college presented nothing to support an inference to- beyond reasonable doubt that Chik’s detritus was the result of acupuncture.

“It’s an acupuncture needle.”

But the judge was convinced by the patient’s experience in Chik’s makeshift clinic.

She described entering her house and passing a waiting room to one of two rooms opening onto a short hallway.

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

“Mr. Chik asked me to lie face down on the treatment table. In this position, I felt Mr. Chik insert six needles into my back.”

Chik’s lawyers argued that there was no expert evidence to say “whether the needles used were, in fact, acupuncture needles” or whether the locations where Chik inserted them were as described. in the “Regulations” governing the profession of acupuncture.

Veenstra was not convinced.

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

“If an unregistered ‘therapist’ could evade the College’s regulations simply by using unapproved needles and attempting to stimulate unapproved areas of skin, then the regulations would fail to achieve their public policy objective.”

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

A sanction for contempt of court – which could range from a fine to prison time – will be decided at a later hearing.