Man Sentenced to 6 Months Jail for Taking Two Shared Mobikes

Caught destroying the locks and attempting to make the two shared bicycles from Mobike his own, a Shenzhen resident was sentenced to 6-months in jail and a fine of 3,000 yuan ($473) for theft by the People’s Court of Longgang District in Shenzhen. This is the first case of stealing shared bicycles which has resorted to a sentence in Guangdong Province.

The court found out that on January 25 this year, the defendant Mr. Wei secretly took two Mobikes from the gate of the Yongchang Industrial Zone in Ailian village, Longgang District, to the factory‘s warehouse where he worked. He sawed the lock off using a machine from the factory and had plans to conceal it in a generator room so that he could make the two bikes his own. When Wei was sawing the bike lock, he happened to be spotted by several passersby who filmed the whole sawing process and uploaded the video to the Internet.

After Mobike received the information, its operation and maintenance personnel found out the bicycle’s serial code through the online video, and tracked the records of the ride history of the two stolen bicycles and their specific location through the GPS. They immediately called the police. The Ailian police station of Longmen District quickly sent the police to the scene and arrested the man. The two stolen bikes were later appraised to be worth 4,760 yuan ($749) in total.

Wei, the defendant, has confessed his crime and voluntarily pleaded guilty and will to accept his punishment. The People’s Court of Longgang District held that Wei’s behavior had constituted the crime of theft. However, taking his voluntary confession into consideration, they imposed a lighter punishment and made the above judgment in accordance with the sentencing recommendations from People’s Procuratorate in China.