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11 years in jail for trading fake notes

By Cao Li (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-25 09:50

SHANGHAI: A court here Wednesday sentenced two men and a woman from Henan province to between nine months and 11 years behind bars for trading and possessing large amounts of fake banknotes.

Wang Zidong, 46, fell to his knees and started crying as the Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced him to 11 years in jail and fined him 200,000 yuan ($29,300) for selling fake notes worth more than 1 million yuan at face value after a hearing that lasted four hours.

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Song Xiuhong, 45, was sentenced to a term of 10 and a half years with a fine of 200,000 yuan for buying the counterfeit notes.

Chen Xinxia, Song's wife, was sentenced to nine months in prison with a fine of 10,000 yuan for possessing fake notes worth 10,145 yuan.

The guilty have been granted a period of 10 working days starting today to file an appeal in the higher Shanghai High People's Court.

According to the verdict, Wang Zidong arrived in Shanghai on November 6, 2008, carrying a box full of fake cash totaling more than 1.1 million yuan. "He was going to sell the counterfeit notes to Song Xiuhong," the verdict said.

Wang met Song in the afternoon and went to his house in suburban Jiading district, where they "repacked the fake cash."

Police raided the apartment at about 6 pm and confiscated the fake notes, seizing Wang, Song and his wife Chen Xinxia, who arrived at the scene later with more than 10,000 yuan worth of fake cash in her handbag.

Wang told the court during the hearing that he brought the box, "unaware of what it contained".