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Students Jailed After Scamming £22,000 Worth Of Free Chicken On KFC App

KFC rejection letter
Credit: @kfc_uki/Instagram & KFC

A group of students has been jailed after scamming KFC out of £22,000 worth of free chicken due to a glitch on their app. 

Xu, from China’s eastern province of Jiangsu, discovered that if he switched between the app and its official WeChat account, he would get endless food vouchers. 

The university student then decided to share the trick with four other students and he began selling KFC meals for extra cash. 

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KFC mobile app
The students could get unlimited free chicken thanks to the KFC mobile app glitch. Credit: KFC

Within the space of just six months, Xu cost KFC’s China parent company, Yum China Holdings, around 58,000 yuan in meals. Plus, his mates had also racked up bills of their own, totaling between 8,900 yuan and 47,000 yuan, reports The Paper

The five students have now been accused of committing fraud, in the minds of the Xuhui District People’s Court.

“Being fully aware of this bug, the convicted deliberately engaged in false transactions and illegally profited from them, which constituted the crime of fraud,” court papers state. 

In Chinese law, the offence carries a five-year sentence but, fortunately, Xu earned court leniency by handing himself in and pleading guilty. According to reports, he also paid an undisclosed sum of money to KFC as compensation too.

So Xu’s five-year sentence has been reduced to just two and a half years, and he’s been fined 6,000 yuan. 

The four other students that exploited the app’s error were given sentences that vary between 15 months and two years in prison, alongside fines of their own. 

Over the past few days, the case has been trending on China’s social media app Weibo. People are arguing that Xu should have reported the glitch straight away but others are on the student’s side and say he simply took advantage of the mistake.

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Written by Aimee Walker

Aimee is a senior content editor at IGV who specialises in finding the best original stories, trending topics and entertainment news. She graduated from Birmingham City University with a degree in Media and Communications.