The bizarre story of China's most prolific bank-robbers, who stole literal tons of cash and spent it on losing lotto tickets

Writing in Marker, David Gauvey Herbert gives us an extended-play version of China's legendary bank-robber, Ren Xiaofeng, a bank official in a small industrial city who tried to make ends meet by stealing cash to buy lottery tickets, planning to return the money out of his winnings -- but instead lost, and kept on losing, until he'd stolen literal tons of cash.

Ren's story is a snapshot of China in the early 2000s, when banking jobs were corrupt sinecures handed out via patronage and nepotism, allowing Ren to first suborn and then bypass the vault guards; it's also a portrait of China during the peak of its boom, when millions in cash were sloshing around, passing from business-people (many of them out-and-out crooks) to government officials to safe-deposit boxes in the vaults of banks like Ren's, the largest branch of the Agricultural Bank of China in the city of Hendan.

Ren cycled through various confederates during his years of theft, and it was only due to the lax security and corruption in his bank that he continued to get away with it. But things came to a head when he got wind of a looming cash audit that would reveal his thefts, and he planned a final score with his accomplice and fellow vault guard, Ma Xiangjing.

The two stole millions in a breathtaking daylight raid, brazenly carrying it out past the guards, and handed it over to crooked lottery ticket sellers who labored through the day, printing out hundreds of thousands of tickets -- which still didn't net the pair a jackpot. Read the rest