These guys were lucky it happened in London. In China, ...it's a whole nother story.
In China, ATM Glitch Gets Man Life SentenceMark Magnier, Los Angeles Times
February 28, 2008
BEIJING — It seemed like a gift from heaven in a country where very little is free. When security guard Xu Ting went to an ATM in the southern city of Guangzhou on a Friday night in the spring of 2006 and withdrew $140, he noticed that it only deducted 14 cents from his account. Over the next eight hours, he made 170 more withdrawals, pocketing upward of $24,000.
During the next several months, he lost some of the money to a thief on a train, tried to start up a company that failed, and gambled most of the rest on thousands of lottery tickets that turned out to be losers. With little cash left, he got a job.
Then a routine police ID check led to his arrest.
Xu’s disappointment at how little the windfall had changed his life was nothing compared with what happened next. He was ordered imprisoned for life by a Chinese court late last year. The crime: bank robbery.
Xu’s case has attracted widespread attention in China, fanning public ire at the judiciary, the banking industry and corrupt officials who get away with far greater crimes than ordinary people who can’t get a break.
Fearful of the growing anger over perceived injustice and China’s widening rich-poor gap, the government late last week held a retrial for Xu, a rarity in a country where the state is presumed to always be right. A verdict could be announced as early as the end of the week.
For Xu’s father, the initial court decision suggests China’s laws have not kept up with societal changes or common sense, a view some legal experts share.
“My son is not a bad kid, but it’s such a money society,” said Xu Cailiang, his father. “I don’t know much about the law, but I think this sentence is totally unreasonable. Ninety percent of people in China would have taken the money.”