A Taiwanese legislator has been forced to deny a website’s claim that he’s a degenerate sports lottery gambler.

On Wednesday, an online news portal claimed that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Hsieh Wei-chou was a fixture at two Taiwan Sports Lottery retail outlets and had run up sports lottery debts of nearly NT$10m (US $309k).

The report quoted Hsieh Wei-chou (pictured, publicly apologizing last year for an unrelated incident) saying he no longer purchased sports lottery tickets and his sole focus was on his city councilor duties. Yet a source at Taipei City Council contradicted the councilor’s claims, saying his mother Yu Fang-chin had been forced to return to Japan to clear up her son’s debts and that his furious father had suggested that his son “might as well die.”

The source further alleged that Hsieh Wei-chou had ramped up his sports lottery stakes after being elected to city council in 2014. This allegedly led to him taking out low-interest loans that Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank offers councilors, as well as borrowing money in the name of his council office.