Banned for his con acts in Thailand, a notorious German panhandler appears in Taiwan
Taiwan News
Date: 2017/09/25
By Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
TAIPEI (Taipei News) — A German panhandler who has a penchant for partying and
has been blacklisted from a number of Asian countries for using his physical condition to dupe good Samaritans out of large sums of money, drew the attention of police in Taiwan’s southern resort town of Kenting.
The German man, Benjamin Holst, often referred to as “the party beggar with the big foot,” has built a reputation across Southeast Asia for using his condition, a rare type of localized gigantism called Macrodystrophia lipomatosa, to trick unsuspecting passersby of large amounts of money to fund his party and prostitute habit.
He preys on the sympathies of strangers who take pity on him for his abnormally swollen legs, which though unsightly, are actually not as painful or debilitating as they may seem. In a notorious case in 2014 in Thailand, he convinced locals to raise US$1,432 for him to buy a plane ticket home, provide free housing, and even set up a crowdfunding site. [FULL STORY]