A 24-year-old who deliberately withdrew 175,000 yuan (US$23,000) by taking advantage of a malfunctioning ATM machine has received a life prison sentence.

The penalty was the same as that handed down to Qin Yu, a senior official convicted of receiving several million yuan in bribes.

According to reports, Xu Ting, a man in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, was convicted of maliciously withdrawing the sum from an ATM machine that deducted only one yuan from Xu's account for every 1,000 yuan withdrawn.

Since Xu had fled with the money for nearly one year and had spent it all by the time he was caught, the court simply could not find any extenuating circumstances.

By contrast, Qin, the former secretary to Shanghai's former Party Chief Chen Liangyu, escaped a death penalty for "significantly meritorious deeds."

In Qin's case this referred to the fact that he had turned in most of the bribes, and had provided important clues in implicating other officials.

While the two have been punished similarly, Qin's illicit gains were more than 40 times that of Xu.

Qin's former position simply makes it easy for him to perform significantly great meritorious deeds.

As an ordinary citizen, Xu stood little chance of winning merits in this respect.

It also seems that Qin's strong financial situation made it very much easier for him to make up for the stolen money.

Xu, however, apparently unaccustomed to this windfall, not only had been on the run for one year, but had also actually squandered the money.

In more than one sense, their fates were determined long before their captures.