Man lifts sleeping ex-girlfriend’s eyelids to unlock phone and steal $24,000

The banking app has pledged to make swift changes

A man in China has been jailed after lifting his girlfriend's eyelids to unlock her phone, where he then stole money from her digital wallet. The resident of the southern city of Nanning, whose last name is Huang, was sentenced to 3 and a half years in prison and fined 20,000 yuan ($3,100) for stealing 154,000 yuan ($24,000) from his ex-girlfriend, reports Nanning Evening News. In December 2020, Huang visited his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Dong, after telling her he wished to return money he had once borrowed. Dong was allegedly sick, so Huang offered to prepare food and give her cold medicine, which in turn caused Dong to fall asleep. Huang then used her fingerprint to unlock her phone and lifted her eyelid in order to access the payment app Alipay. From here he transferred the money from her account to his, proceeding to steal her phone and coat. Huang used the money to fund his living expenses and pay off gambling debts. Dong discovered the betrayal the next day, and despite fleeing the city, Huang was arrested in April 2021. In response, Alipay has offered to compensate Dong and also instigate new locks onto its app to prevent future cases. In other technology news, Tesla CEO and SpaceX visionary Elon Musk was named TIME Magazine's Person of the Year. The magazine wrote in its announcement: "For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year."