3-year jail sentence for online swindler
Print Edition
A woman who defrauded online donors out of nearly 100,000 yuan (US$15,210) by claiming that her father died in the Tianjin blasts was sentenced to three years in prison yesterday in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Yang Cailan, 20, from Fangchenggang City in Guangxi, was also fined 8,000 yuan and had her mobile phone, which she used to swindle people, seized, according to the Fangcheng District People’s Court. The money she collected has been returned.
Yang, who is unemployed, published two posts on Weibo in the early hours of August 13, 2015. She said she could not contact her father, who worked near the blast site, one day after explosions ripped through a warehouse in Tianjin Port, killing 173 people, the court said.
Initially, she was merely seeking attention, but when she became aware of Weibo’s tipping function, she decided to take advantage of the opportunity to swindle readers. Her last post, which said she had finally found her father at a hospital but he was dying, prompted 3,739 Weibo users to give her 96,576.44 yuan.
Sina Weibo has closed Yang’s account and all the money has been returned, Xinhua news agency reported.
When Yang was arrested on August 15, she told police that her Weibo account was accessed by someone without her permission, and insisted that she had not used it since the end of 2012, the court said.
Yang did not say if she would appeal the sentence.
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