A Chinese immigrant who tried fake his death in the September 11th attacks on New York to avoid a fraud case was jailed for four years yesterday.
Judge Denny Chin said Steven Chin Leung was guilty of "despicable conduct".
Leung (28) had been released on bail in Hawaii on a passport fraud charge when he decided to use the destruction of the World Trade Center towers last year to cover his tracks. Almost 3,000 people died in towers when two hijacked planes slammed into them.
Just after September 11th, Leung telephoned his lawyer and New York city authorities pretending to be a brother and reporting himself missing.
The court was told that Leung said he had been employed as a temporary worker by Cantor-Fitzgerald, a brokerage which lost 658 employees in the disaster.
He tried to back his claim with an e-mail signed by a real Cantor manager whose name he found on the Internet.
AFP