Rogue B.C. acupuncturist's unlicensed needlework captured by hidden camera

The young woman with the severe eczema had undergone acupuncture before.

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

"I explained to him that they were more painful than the other injection sites," the woman wrote in a B.C. Supreme Court affidavit filed as part of an effort to close Chik's contraband clinic.

"Mr. Chik explained he was 'twisting the needles,' and that is why I was in pain with respect to those two sites. At the time, I believed Mr. Chik, but I still felt unsettled by his answer."

A years-long battle

Despite her misgivings, the woman would return for more treatments — but not without a surreptitiously placed cellphone camera to make a record of Chik's nefarious needlework.

The video she captured was part of a body of evidence that convinced a B.C. Supreme Court judge last week to find Chik in contempt of court for violating a 2016 order banning the 74-year-old from the unauthorized practice of acupuncture. 

Justice H. William Veenstra's ruling is the latest chapter in a years-long battle between Chik and B.C.'s College of Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Acupuncturists.

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

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

'He must stop doing this'

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

According to an affidavit filed as part of earlier proceedings, he claimed he studied medicine and acupuncture in China, where he worked as a doctor in a government hospital until he escaped to Canada in 1989 following the Tiananmen Square massacre.

He claimed to have worked full-time six days a week as a kitchen helper at a Vancouver Thai restaurant until 2014.

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

A judge granted a permanent injunction preventing Chik from practicing acupuncture in June 2016, but within months, the college had already received an anonymous tip that he was flouting the order, visiting "numerous private residences, sometimes carrying a black Nike bag."

The latest court proceedings contain an affidavit from one of Chik's neighbours, who claimed the steady stream of cars daily attending Chik's $2.8 million home dried up after the 2016 injunction.

But in May 2023, something changed.

"I began to see approximately one or two vehicles per day," the neighbour wrote.

"By June 2023, the number of vehicles attending Mr. Chik's house started to increase."

The neighbour 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 to be totally unacceptable in our society today, where we have rules and regulations," he wrote in a letter to the college included with the affidavit.

"Mr. Chik ... seem[s] to have a total disregard for what is expected of law-abiding citizens in Canada, and I hope that you can send him a very clear message that he must stop doing this."

'I approached the garbage bin'

The neighbour's complaint sparked a probe that saw a team of nine gumshoes follow Chik for nearly three weeks last August as he rose before dawn each day and drove his gold Toyota Camry to a nearby mall where he dumped plastic bags into big box store garbage cans.

"Mr. Chik exited his vehicle carrying a plastic bag, walked toward a garbage bin, and then threw the plastic bag in the bin. He then walked back to his vehicle, re-entered the vehicle and proceeded to drive very slowly in the Lansdowne Centre parking lot," wrote one private investigator.

"I continued to observe the garbage bin. I did not see anyone approach or discard anything in the garbage bin. At 4:30 a.m. I approached the garbage bin and retrieved the plastic bag."

A report submitted into evidence contains pictures of the contents of the bags the investigators fished out of the garbage — including insulin syringes, blister packs of acupuncture needles, opened glass vials and alcohol swabs.

Justice Veenstra said Chik's early morning garbage runs were "suspicious" but said the evidence they yielded was "flawed" as the college failed to present anything to back up an inference beyond a reasonable doubt that Chik's detritus was the result of acupuncture.

'This an acupuncture needle'

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

She described entering his house and walking past a waiting room into one of two rooms off a short corridor.

"Each room had two treatment tables that were separated by hanging sheets. Each treatment area had a bedside table that included a small electric-powered machine and a fragrance diffuser," the woman wrote.

 "Mr. Chik directed me to lie facedown on the treatment table. While in this position, I felt Mr. Chik insert six needles in my back."

Chik's lawyers claimed no expert evidence existed to say "whether the needles being used were, in fact, acupuncture needles" or whether the places where Chik stuck them were those described in the "Regulation" governing the profession of acupuncture.

Veenstra wasn't convinced.

"It seems to me that as long as a needle is used for the purpose set out in the Regulation's definition of 'acupuncture,' it is a needle used for acupuncture and thus an acupuncture needle," the judge wrote.

"If an unregistered 'therapist' could escape regulation by the College simply by using unapproved needles and attempting to stimulate unapproved sites of skin, then the Regulation would not be accomplishing its public-interest purpose."

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

A penalty for contempt of court — which could range from a fine to jail time — will be decided at a later hearing.