Darren Wang reports for the military service on March 13, 2025, beginning a one-year service term, according to local reports. Photo: VCG

Darren Wang, an actor from the island of Taiwan, was sentenced to six months in prison by a court in New Taipei City on the island of Taiwan on Wednesday for illegally obtaining others' personal data, according to multiple Taiwan media reports.

Court trials found that Wang paid about NT$3.6 million ($115,000) to a so-called intermediary group to falsify medical records intended to support a draft exemption. The effort collapsed after the group's alleged leader, Chen Chih-ming, was arrested in February 2025 on separate drug-related charges and became unreachable, local media outlet udn.com reported.

Believing he had been defrauded, Wang reported to police. However, during police investigation, investigators found messages from Wang's cellphone suggesting Wang and associates sought assistance through both legal and criminal channels to obtain personal data on individuals involved in order to track Chen, according to udn.com.

Wang's associate Yu Hsiang-min helped connect him to Liu, a then acting police in Taipei, who allegedly accessed Chen's incarceration-related records and passed them through intermediaries.

In a separate but related episode, Wang's girlfriend, Chueh Mu-hsuan, was allegedly defrauded of more than NT$4 million in an investment dispute. Wang again used intermediaries to obtain personal information of the suspect and his relatives in an effort to pursue repayment.

The court in New Taipei City ruled on Wednesday that Wang and Chueh were guilty of illegal use of personal data but acquitted them of illegal collection of personal information. Wang and Chueh received six-month sentences, commutable to fines. Other defendants, including Yu, received lighter sentences, while Liu, the police officer involved in the case, received a one-year and four-month prison term for document forgery.

The case remains subject to appeal.

Publicly available information shows Wang was born in 1991 and rose to fame in the Chinese mainland for his role in the 2015 film Our Times.