A Chinese man was sentenced to six months behind bars after catching his wife sleeping with another man and accepting money as compensation for the cheating.

In March 2021, Lu, a 33-year-old man from Shandong, eastern China, noticed that his wife was taking unusually long to get ready to take their daughter to her private tutor, so he decided to follow her around.

When she went into a local hotel, Lu started suspecting his wife of cheating, and those suspicions were confirmed when he stormed into her room to find her in skimpy underwear next to a naked man.

In a fit of rage, Lu beat the other man, surnamed Liu, and kicked his wife, but he eventually accepted Liu’s offer of 25,000 yuan ($3,300) in three online installments as compensation for sleeping with his wife.

But during his divorce proceedings, Lu was shocked to learn that Liu had filed a complaint against him accusing him of extortion.

To this day, Lu is convinced that his former wife was the mastermind behind Liu’s complaint, as she wanted to gain an advantage in a heated custody battle over their young daughter.

In November 2021, a District Court sentenced Lu to six months behind bars for blackmailing his wife’s lover and forcing him to pay financial compensation.

The 33-year-old man appealed, but in March 2022, the Zibo Intermediate People’s Court upheld the decision of the original court. 

He tried appealing the decision again, but the intermediate court once more rejected his request in December 2022.

As a last resort, Lu challenged the original verdict at the Shandong Provincial High Court which concluded that “the original verdict did not verify some facts and some evidence was conflicting,” and ordered the Zibo intermediate court to reexamine the case.

Earlier this year, the court heard the case again, and this time exonerated Lu, concluding that he had not forced Liu to pay him the 25,000 yuan, but rather negotiated with him.

Furthermore, the judge ruled that Liu’s actions breached public order, good customs and moral standards, so the husband’s actions were justified.

Last month, we wrote about a similar case where a husband used hidden cameras in his own home to catch his wife cheating with another man and was sentenced to 3 months in jail for surveilling someone without their consent.