A group of Chinese students has been jailed for fraud after exploiting a bug in the KFC mobile app to get unlimited free chickens.
Between them, they put together a bill of £ 22,000, resulting in an endless amount of food stamps.
The program started in 2018, when a college student named Xu, from Jiangsu, China, was the first to discover a bug in the KFC mobile app.
He soon realized that by switching between the app and the restaurant’s official account on WeChat, he could create an unlimited number of free food vouchers.
When he showed four of his friends how to do the free tour, he began selling Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) meals to other students.
to me Paper, Xu cost Yum China Holdings – KFC’s parent company in China – about 58,000 yuan (about £ 6,400) over six months.
Her four companions also put in their own bills, which ranged from 8,900 yuan to 47,000 yuan.
Taking advantage of the KFC foul, the five students were deemed to have committed fraud in the eyes of the Xuhui County People’s Court.
According to court documents, “with their full knowledge of this error, the convicts deliberately engaged in false transactions and illegally benefited from them, which constitutes a fraud crime.”
Shaw won the court’s clemency by indulging in the offense and admitting it.
He was also alleged to have paid an undisclosed sum to KFC as compensation.
His five-year prison sentence was later reduced to only two and a half years, and he was also fined 6,000 yuan (around £ 650).
The four students involved in the Shaw scam were also sentenced to prison terms ranging from 15 months to two years, and fined 1,000 to 4,000 yuan each.
The latter case sparked a debate on China’s social media network over who should be blamed.
Some argue that Xu should have reported the bug to KFC immediately, while others argue that it was KFC’s fault and that Xu simply took advantage of it.
The U.S. is facing a chicken shortage as fast food chains escalate the sandwich wars and supplies dwindle
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