A man, 28, named Huang by the Chinese media, cooked a meal for his ex-girlfriend and spiked the food with cough medicine to get her drowsy. When she was fast asleep, he manipulated her hand to get a fingerprint, so he could unlock her Huawei cellphone.
He then lifted her eyelids to get an eye scan, so that he could access her account on Alipay, a third-party mobile online payment platform widely used in China. It uses facial recognition software to unlock the account of her digital wallet. Then the crook changed her password.
He proceeded to take 154,000 yuan, more than S$32,000 from her digital wallet. He reportedly took the money to pay off his gambling debts. He already owed her more than S$12,000.
It happened one evening in December 2020, the woman who is identified as Dong in the media, had been feeling ill, according to a report in the Insider which used to be known as the Business Insider.
Earlier that day, the scoundrel had told her he wanted to talk about repaying an existing debt of more than S$12,000.
The day after the big steal, he moved to another city.
Then Ms Dong really woke up. She noticed the very next day that there were unusual transactions on her Alipay account, and reported this to the police.
They tracked him down and arrested him in April this year.
The scoundrel has been jailed for three and a half years.
In addition to jail time, Huang was also fined more than S$4,000 for theft by using secret methods to steal another person’s property.
An Alipay representative said that victims of theft are compensated. The platform urges users to enable multiple locks for their own protection. /TISG
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