Society
Personal data scam: 8 jailed
By Qiu Quanlin (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-05 07:41
 |
Large Medium Small |
GUANGZHOU: A man was sentenced to a year and a half behind bars in the country's first-known case of violating the security of personal information on Sunday, local media reported yesterday.
Zhou Jianping, a resident of Zhuhai, Guangdong province, set up a private investigation company in the provincial capital Guangzhou two years ago and sold personal information like phone numbers and call history records.
| ||||
Zhou sold the phone numbers to a scammer named Lin Guiyu for 16,000 yuan ($2,340).
Lin then conspired with six more people and pretended to be Zhuhai's vice-mayor to cheat his relatives of 50,000 yuan.
The court found the seven-member gang guilty of five other similar crimes, through which they obtained a total of 830,000 yuan using names of officials between December 2008 and February last year.
The seven members of the gang were sentenced to three to 11 years in jail and fined 40,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan.
Neither Zhou nor Lin has filed an appeal against in the higher court.
Zhou is believed to be the first to be sentenced for violating the security of personal information since the country added an article to its Criminal Law to punish such criminals last October.
"It is hard to convict someone of violating the security of personal information simply due to lack of solid evidence," said Peng Hai'ou, a chief judge at Xiangzhou district court.
Article 7 of the revised Criminal Law stipulates that whosoever grossly violates the security of personal information is subject to a jail term of no more than three years or detention.
"In court, it is hard to define how grossly the accused violated the security of personal information," Peng said.
The chief judge warned people to be careful in giving out their personal information, such as phone numbers and residential addresses, to strangers.
