B.C. billionaire admits confining prostitute
Vancouver tycoon David Ho was spared jail on Thursday after pleading guilty to unlawful confinement of a prostitute he prevented from leaving his Vancouver mansion.
Ho, who once owned an airline and still owns a golf course, was sentenced to one-year probation, drug counselling and 45 hours of community service.
Ho also pleaded guilty to possessing an illegal weapon, a charge laid after a switchblade was found in his luggage at Vancouver airport last February. He was also fined $5,000 for possession of an unregistered handgun, which was found in his home with 12 other registered guns.
Ho’s trial on those three charges plus one of drug possession was to begin next week. But he changed his plea to guilty and Crown prosecutor Elliott Poll and defence lawyer Len Doust struck a plea bargain.
Poll read a statement of agreed facts that detailed how Ho had met the woman online and he agreed to pay her for sex before picking her up from her Delta, B.C., apartment on Dec. 28, 2008.
The two smoked cocaine in Ho’s bedroom in his mansion and engaged in consensual sex from about midnight to 5 a.m., when she was prevented from leaving, court heard.
Court heard the woman, who fractured an ankle trying to flee Ho’s grasp, called her father from his bedroom and screamed, “Dad, help me, I’m on a bad date!” She then called 911. In her struggles to get away from Ho, she fell down the stairs and tore her Achilles tendon and slipped out of her top and later pants as Ho grabbed at her. Eventually her bra was removed and she finally was able to break free and run to a neighbour’s after scrambling over a 2.5-metre-high fence wearing only panties.
Doust said Ho admits he used unreasonable force to detain the woman but he was concerned she was going to flee his house into the snow and cold without her jacket and shoes.