Counterfeit stamp lands deadbeat in court

A local man has been sentenced to five months of probation for using a phony official stamp to forge a bank statement so he could avoid repaying a $20,000 debt, a district court said Thursday.

The defendant, surnamed Wu, fabricated the statement to fool the court into believing that he never received the loan, which he had borrowed in March 2008 from his then-girlfriend's mother, according to a press release from Jiading District People's Court.

Court officials noticed that Wu's statement didn't match other statements from the bank. They sought help from a branch in Pudong New Area, which determined that the stamp was a fake.

The bank then provided the court with Wu's real bank statement, which showed he had received the money from his girlfriend's mother.

The mother, who was not identified, sued Wu at the end of 2012, after he repeatedly refused her requests to repay the money. She had an IOU that she demanded Wu write on June 20, 2009 after he failed to pay back the loan on time.

Wu started dating the woman's daughter, surnamed Lai, from Taiwan, in 2005 after she came to Shanghai for business. The pair broke up in 2010 because Wu didn't have an income and was always borrowing money.

In court, Wu denied that he had ever received the money from Lai's mother and provided the bank statement as evidence.

The court ordered him to repay the money after it found out the document was counterfeit.

The court initially sentenced Wu to five months in jail, but gave him a reprieve so he could serve probation instead. He will have to serve jail time if he violates his probation.