A man opened his ex-girlfriend's eyelids while she slept to unlock her phone and steal $24,000, reports say

• A Chinese man has been jailed for stealing money from his ex, per reports.
• Reports say that he used his ex's fingerprint and opened her eyelids to unlock her phone.

A Chinese man has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison after he stole money from his ex-girlfriend by using her fingerprint and lifting her eyelids open to unlock her cellphone while she slept, according to reports.

The 28-year-old man, identified only as Huang, went to the woman's apartment in December 2020 while she was feeling unwell, The Times reported.

He then cooked a meal for the woman, identified only as Dong, and laced it with drowsy cold medicine, lulling her into a deep sleep, per The Times.

Once she was asleep, Huang used his ex-girlfriend's finger to unlock her Huawei phone, according to court documents seen by the local state-run newspaper Nanning Evening News.

He then lifted Dong's eyelids to unlock her Alipay app — a Chinese online payment platform — using facial recognition software, the newspaper said.

After this, according to The Times, he changed her password and withdrew 154,000 yuan ($24,155) from Dong's digital wallet to pay off his gambling debts.

The next morning, according to Vice News, Dong recognized unusual transactions and made a report to the police. Huang had already fled to another city, the media outlet said, but police found and arrested him in April this year.

In addition to his prison sentence, Huang was fined 20,000 Chinese yuan ($3,137).

A district people's court in the southern Chinese city of Nanning, near the Vietnam border, found him guilty of theft by using secret methods to steal another person's property.

A spokesperson for Alipay told Yishou Video that compensation would be offered in the rare event of theft and encouraged users to turn on multiple locks to protect their accounts.