A MAN in Nanshan District lost 265,000 yuan (US$39,778) because he forgot to unbind a terminated phone number from his online wallet account before the phone number was sold to another subscriber, the Shenzhen Evening News reported.

The Nanshan District People’s Court heard the case and decided to give the defendant, known as Zhou, a three-year prison sentence with a reprieve of three years and a fine of 5,000 yuan.

The court decided to be lenient on Zhou because he confessed his guilt when the victim, surnamed Zhang, realized the money in his Alipay wallet was gone and contacted Zhou with the old phone number.

Zhou admitted that in January he had received a phone number from China Mobile, one of the major telecom operators, and found the phone number was already bound to an Alipay account.

It turned out that the phone number previously belonged to Zhang’s father, but Zhang had been using the phone number to register his Alipay wallet even though his father stopped using and recharging the number.

According to the general rules of phone operators, if a subscriber fails to recharge a number for six months, the company can recall the number and sell it to a new subscriber. Zhou happened to get the phone number that Zhang’s father had used.

So when Zhou found that there was already an Alipay wallet account bound to the phone number, he changed the password by following the app’s instructions and transferred a total of 260,000 yuan from the account to his own account.

In February, Zhang found there was only seven yuan left in his Alipay wallet and the password had been changed. Zhang attempted to contact the new owner of the number and the call went through.

The defendant admitted that he had changed the password and transferred the money. Zhou even asked Zhang to give him three months to pay back the money, and as compensation, he would pay an extra 2,650 yuan to him every month.

To convince Zhang, the defendant even added the victim as a friend on WeChat and sent a photo of himself holding his ID card.

With the evidence, Zhang called the police and the defendant was arrested March 30. Zhou’s relatives later helped him pay back all of the money to Zhang.

In consideration of Zhou’s attitude in confessing his guilt, the court decided to give him a three-year reprieve.

The court also reminded residents to unbind all of their financial service accounts from their phone numbers before they change numbers. (Zhang Qian)