Engineer jailed for stealing bank information
A software engineer who abused his position to gather account information on almost one million people has been sentenced to five years for credit card fraud.
Zhang Chunlei, 35, from Jiangsu province, was also fined 50,000 yuan at Tongzhou court.
Li Zhonghua, the trial judge, told METRO Zhang worked as a senior software engineer at Beijing Ruantong Power Information Technology Company when he cracked into some accounts.
Li said Zhang was responsible for inspecting and maintaining the ATM monitoring system for the Beijing branches of a major State-owned bank between 1999 and 2009.
During his work, he had access to customers' information.
According to the regulations of the bank, inspectors are not allowed to use storage devices to capture that information but Zhang secretly copied vast amounts of information, Li said.
The court heard Zhang then attempted to guess the passwords used by some credit card holders and created nine bogus credit cards using blank cards he bought in the Zhongguancun area.
On June 7, 2009, Zhang used a forged China Construction Bank credit card to obtain 7,900 yuan from an ATM at the Beijing Rural Commercial Bank's Yongshun branch in Tongzhou district.
And on June 20, Zhang wore a hat, mask, and gloves when he attended the Tongzhou branch, where he withdrew 70,000 yuan using eight counterfeit credit cards.
A passerby thought he looked suspicious and called police. Zhang was apprehended.
Zhang expressed remorse during the trial, but he said he would appeal the sentence to a higher court.
He explained that he committed the crime in a bid to get money to treat his father, who was battling esophagus cancer in Jiangsu province.
But Li told METRO the sentence was appropriate considering the amount of money involved.
"According to law, if a person is convicted of credit card fraud and the amount of money is between 50,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan, they will face imprisonment of between five and 10 years and a fine of between 50,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan."