A MAN’S bank account was frozen by a court, which mistook him for another person because he hadn’t updated his ID card information with his bank in time, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported Thursday.

Wei Xiaopeng, who works in Longgang District, found that he couldn’t withdraw money from his bank card at an ATM early last month although he has nearly 100,000 yuan (US$14,756) in his bank account.

A staffer at the bank said there might have been something wrong with his card and suggested that he apply for a new bank card. However, Wei hadn’t updated his ID card information with the bank after he obtained a second-generation ID card, which has a different ID card number from his previous one, so he had to go back to his hometown to get an identity certificate from the local police station.

After Wei received his new card June 19, he was shocked to find that his account had been frozen by a court in Shaanxi Province and he was saddled with a debt of 160,000 yuan.

An officer with the Fuping County People’s Court in Shaanxi told Wei that the bank had frozen his account based on a court order to freeze a bank account with the ID information of a person surnamed Zhang.

A receipt issued May 8 by the bank to the court noted that the bank had frozen “the bank account of Zhang,” but the account was actually Wei’s.

The staffer at the bank said the bank’s system would automatically handle court requests for freezing bank accounts.

Ma Kui, a judge at the court, said that they looked up Zhang’s bank account based on his ID card number in the Supreme Court’s online system, and they ended up finding Wei’s account because Wei’s old ID card number was the same as Zhang’s and he hadn’t registered his new ID information with the bank in time. (Zhang Yang)