Chinese Worker Gets Life Sentence for Taking $24,500 from Faulty ATM

Xu Ting found a faulty ATM deducted only 1 yuan from his account for every 1,000 yuan withdrawn. So he did it again and again, subsequently withdrew 175-thousand yuan or about 24-thousand US dollars in over 170 transactions...

A south China court failed to make a verdict after rehearing the case of a migrant worker who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for taking 175,000 yuan (24,400 U.S. dollars) from a malfunctioning automatic teller machine. On the court, the worker defended himself : 'I discovered that the ATM malfunctioned and I felt it was my duty to take all the money out, keep them myself for the bank's sake. I was going to give the money back to the the bank one day.'

The verdict of the 24-year-old's first trial sentence last year has aroused widespread attention and debate. Many people said Xu Ting (许霆) from Linfen City, Shanxi Province, who worked in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, as a security guard, was innocent or did not deserve such a severe punishment.

Xu's father, who arrived from the northern Shanxi Province on Thursday, insisted his son was not a criminal. "He made a mistake, and so did the bank and its ATM. It's not a matter of embezzlement or theft."


The father, who finished only junior high school, has been studying law since his son, a security guard in Guangzhou, was convicted of theft last year.

The Intermediate People's Court of Guangzhou was told by the Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court last month to rehear the case. It said the November ruling lacked evidence and some facts needed clarification.

In court on Friday, prosecutors insisted in charging Xu with stealing from a banking institution while the accused's lawyers protested their client was not guilty.

In April 2006, Xu found that a Guangzhou Commercial Bank ATM deducted only 1 yuan from his account for every 1,000 yuan withdrawn.

Wu Yichun, Xu Ting's lawyer, said, "According to Xu Ting's confession, there was more than 170 yuan in his bank account. He had wanted to take out a hundred yuan, but he wrongly input the number of one thousand, after he pressed the confirm button, one thousand yuan just came out from the machine."

When Xu put his card back again in the ATM, he found there's only one yuan less in his account. He tried again, another one thousand yuan came out of the ATM. Then he did it again and again, and took away over fifty thousand yuan.

Xu subsequently withdrew 175-thousand yuan or about 24-thousand US dollars in over 170 transactions. Later he let a friend surnamed Guo know that secret, Guo withdrew 18,000 yuan.

Guo was jailed for one year after turning himself in while Xu remained on the run for a year before being caught in May. He was given a life sentence for theft in the first trial.

Xu admitted to withdrawing the money over repeated visits to the same machine in 2006, but said it did not constitute a crime and he shouldn't have been given a life sentence.

"I discovered that the ATM malfunctioned and I felt it was my duty to take all the money out and keep them myself for the bank's sake. I decided to give the money back to the the bank one day," Xu told the court.

However, Xu quit his job after that without collecting his pay and took a coach home.

"I called the bank manager a month later and asked him if I could return the money month by month because I spent some of it. The manager told me I would definitely be jailed whether or not I returned the money.

"So I gave up the thought of returning the money," Xu said.

The court session, which lasted four hours starting from 9 a.m., was covered by more than 100 journalists nationwide.

Counsel Yang Zhenping reasoned Xu did not go into the bank, so he did not steal from a banking institution; he used his real identity to get the money at a public venue, which is not to "steal"; what he did was a case of improper gains according to the civil law and should not be judged according to the criminal law.

Xu's other counsel, Wu Yichun, added the bank's records provided by prosecutors contradicted the ATM record with regards to time, so it should not be relied upon.


Zhong Wei, prof. of Financial Research Center, BJ Normal Univ., said, "The reason why a bank deposition card could take out such a lot of money is because there's a major mistake in the banking system. From this case, we can see that the ATM's problem was there for a long time without being corrected. In addition, the bank has got compensation from the company that runs the ATM three days after Xu's taking of the money."

Experts say some commercial banks conduct machine maintenance once every two days, which means mistakes can't be corrected in a short time. As more people choose to use ATMs, the machine maintenance work becomes increasingly important.

Source: CCTV, Xinhua