He Peng was sentenced to life imprisonment for taking out cash that did not belong to him. (Schematic / Unsplash)
A series of small mistakes lead to a lifetime of regret.He Peng, a man from mainland China, was admitted to the Yunnan Public Security College 23 years ago. However, one day during his studies, he discovered that the bank account his parents gave him for living expenses was inexplicably 1 million yuan (approximately NT$4.45 million). Driven by heart and restlessness, lead out andhideAmong them, nearly 430,000 yuan (approximately NT$1.91 million) was sentenced to life imprisonment.
According to “Sohu News”, He Peng, who was born in a poor rural area, couldn’t believe that his account had an extra 1 million yuan at first. After he tried to withdraw 100 yuan, he repeatedly withdrew money from ATMs of different banks 215 times. Received 429,000 cash. However, He Peng, who knew that the money did not belong to him, made a serious mistake. After he took the money back to his hometown and told his mother about it, he let her hide the money in a hole in the pigsty and asked her to report the loss of the ATM card.
After the bank discovered the discrepancy in the accounts and called the police, the police found He Peng’s parents through the information provided by the bank. money, but things developed quickly beyond the imagination of the two elders. He Peng was “arrested 3 times and released 2 times” by the police from 2001 to 2002, and he was expelled from school the first time he was detained.
The local Intermediate People’s Court sentenced He Peng to life imprisonment in July 2002 on the grounds that He Peng took advantage of the failure of the bank’s computer system to illegally withdraw cash and take it for himself, and falsely reported the loss of an ATM card, which constituted the crime of robbery. Although He Peng’s parents and defense lawyers appealed five times, arguing that He Peng withdrew money from his ATM card without committing a crime, they were all rejected by the court.
Things didn’t turn around until the Guangdong Higher Court revoked a case similar to He Peng’s case in 2008. In the retrial in 2009, the Yunnan Provincial Higher Court held that He Peng’s withdrawal of funds in accordance with normal procedures, compared with the premeditated destructive theft, was a serious crime. Certain accidental minor crimes, and the subjective criminal intent is relatively small, and all the stolen money will be returned; and the defense lawyer’s strategy of “not pleading not guilty, but pleading guilty” also assisted in the reversal of the verdict. In the end, the court sentenced He Peng to 8 years and 6 months in prison and a fine of 20,000 yuan (approximately NT$89,000). When the judgment was announced, He Peng had already served 8 years and 4 months in prison.