Man Sentenced to Prison for Using Remote Vacuum to Catch His Wife Cheating

A Taiwanese man used his home’s robot vacuum cleaner to catch his wife cheating on him. However, the scheme landed him in jail.

According to a Saturday, August 27, report from the South China Morning Post, the unidentified man used footage recorded remotely from his robotic vacuum as evidence in a civil suit against his wife and her lover for infringing on his marital rights, which he won.

Everything started in 2023, when he discovered a used toothbrush at their holiday home. Suspicious, he began reviewing surveillance footage of their parking garage and noticed his wife being driven home by a strange man. Three months later, he activated their remote vacuum from its mobile app and saw his wife having an intimate encounter with another man. It’s unclear if it was the same man from the parking garage footage.

In order to build evidence for the eventual civil suit, the man began recording the moment. The video showed his wife changing, walking around unclothed and lying with her partner. The footage was accepted and used as evidence in the civil suit, but his victory was short-lived.

The wife counter-sued, accusing him of recording private footage without her consent and disseminating it. The husband argued that, because the civil court already accepted the footage, he was legally justified in his actions.

However, the court didn’t agree and sentenced him to five months in prison and forced him to pay a NT$150,000 (roughly $4,730) fine. According to Taiwanese law, recording someone privately without permission is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison, according to the outlet.