A man from Shandong recently broke into a rural home in Baoying County, Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, and made off with a safe weighing roughly 100 jin.
On May 17, 2026, a farming household in Fanshui Town, Baoying County, reported to police that a black safe kept on the second floor had been stolen, with contents worth nearly one million yuan, including 570,000 yuan in cash and more than 300 grams of gold.
Given the seriousness of the case, Baoying police immediately organized forces to investigate and found that on May 15 a truck with Shandong license plates had lingered for a long time on a national highway near the village where the household was located.
Following the trail, officers eventually arrested the suspect, surnamed Hou, in Pingyi County, Shandong Province, and seized melted gold and part of the cash from his home.
With the suspect and stolen goods both recovered, Hou confessed to the crime.
Zhu Rong, assistant prosecutor of the First Prosecution Department of the Baoying County People's Procuratorate, said Hou was a truck driver with multiple prior theft convictions who, short of money, returned to his old trade. At the time of the offense, while driving his truck past a village along National Highway 233, he acted on a sudden impulse and entered the village to commit theft.
Hou admitted that after climbing over the wall and entering the house at around 8 p.m. that day, he found an enormous safe in a wardrobe in a second-floor bedroom.
Worried that prying or smashing it would make too much noise, Hou relied on his considerable brute strength and simply moved the safe from the second floor down to the first floor and loaded it into his truck.
Zhu Rong said the safe was nearly half a meter long and wide and nearly one meter high, weighing close to 100 jin.
Hou was physically strong and threw the safe from a second-floor window onto a first-floor platform, then pushed it to the ground, found a small cart, and pushed the safe into his truck.
Hou did not expect that within just over ten days of the crime he would fall into the hands of the law.
The Baoying County People's Procuratorate recently prosecuted Hou for theft. Because the amount of stolen property was especially huge, the court sentenced Hou to a fixed-term imprisonment of ten years and six months and fined him 200,000 yuan in accordance with the law.
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