ATM thief wants compensation
By Li Yingqing and Guo Anfei | China Daily | Updated: 2010-01-19 07:49
KUNMING: When He Peng set foot in Tongle Square of Luliang county, Yunnan province, at 2 am on Saturday, the 30-year-old felt like a stranger in his hometown.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002 after withdrawing nearly 430,000 yuan ($63,000) from his bank's ATMs, which gave him money that was mistakenly put into his account by a bank clerk.
He was set free at midnight on Saturday and given a second shot at life after Xu Ting, a young man in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, who committed a similar crime, had his life sentence commuted to five years in 2008. In the aftermath, media coverage raised questions over the fairness of the judicial system.
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