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Man in jail for cracking a joke over text message

By Liu Zhen (China Daily Henan Bureau)
Updated: 2009-07-23 18:26

A man was sentenced to one year in jail for sending a deceptive text message to his friend out of boredom and unintentionally affecting thousands of people.

The 35-year-old Cao Quanwei, from Shecun county in GongYi, was found guilty on July 21 by the People's Court of GongYi in Henan province, of deliberately fabricating and spreading a false message of terror to the public.

In the evening of the Valentine's Day this year, Cao, admitted to sending a fake message from supposedly China Earthquake Administration to a close friend out of boredom, alerting about the next day's earthquake of a 7.5 magnitude.

Although the text message was meant to be a joke Cao's friend who received it believed it was a legitimate alert, because of a minor earthquake which happened in the area earlier this year.

The friend forwarded it to people he knew who lived in the area and as a result, thousands of people being scared of the earthquake spent the night outside instead of sleeping at home.

The next day, when Cao realized the seriousness of his joke's consequences, he turned himself in to the police.