Jacky Cheung Is Now The Crime-Fighting Heavenly King, As 31 More Arrests Are Made At His Concerts

It seems that bad guys just cannot resist the siren call of “Farewell Kiss”. Last weekend, Jacky Cheung caught a whopping 31 fugitives at his concert in Haikou in China. Okay, so he didn’t nab them himself — the baddies were arrested by the police as they swayed along to his hits in the audience. The Heavenly King’s concerts appear to be a hotbed for criminals, who are such huge fans of the singer, they come out of hiding and risk arrest to watch his concerts in China.

This latest haul of 31 crooks — where police mobilised 6,600 men and caught 20 scalpers, four guys selling fake IDs and seven theft suspects — is but the latest in a string of arrests at the God of Songs’ gigs. In April, a wanted criminal was identified in the audience with the help of facial recognition software at his concert in Nanchang. Soon after, two more fugitives were caught at separate performances, while five more were nabbed at other concerts across China in the months after. In September, 12 more were arrested while crooning along to Jacky’s songs.

The arrests were made possible by facial recognition technology developed by law enforcement authorities, which is a software able to pick out faces even in crowds of tens of thousands. A man wanted for “economic crimes” who was detained at a Jacky Cheung concert, which he was enjoying with his wife, was apparently in shock, and said he thought he would be safe in such a huge crowd.

As for what Jacky himself has to say about his new status as a crime-buster and “enemy of fugitives”, he quipped, “I guess people still need entertainment no matter who they are”, and “If you're a crook, you will get arrested wherever you go.”