(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-07 23:12

BEIJING  -- China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has ruled that if a person found another's credit card and used it to draw cash from a cashpoint it would be swindling.

In a judicial explanation, which took effect on Wednesday, the SPP said the behavior was "falsely using any other's credit card as his own", which was classified as one of the four credit card swindling activities in Article 196 of China's Criminal Law.

The  maximum jail term is is life, along with property confiscation.

The SPP made the explanation on request of a local procuratorate in Zhejiang Province as how to decide the nature of such behavior.

Earlier this year, a case concerning the use of a bank card came under the spotlight as a 24-year-old Xu Ting, who was initially sentenced to life imprisonment for pocketing 175,000 yuan (24,400 US dollars) from a faulty ATM in southeast China's Guangdong Province.

The trial sparked an outcry among the media and legal experts alike, with many saying that he didn't deserve such severe punishment.

The Intermediate People's Court of Guangzhou later convicted Xu of theft, sentenced him to five-year imprisonment, and rescinded the previous life sentence. It also fined Xu 20,000 yuan and demanded that he return his windfall to the bank.