A SHENZHEN lawyer was sentenced to one and a half years in prison after being found guilty of forging a court order and an official stamp.

On Dec. 2, 2005, Fan Yun, a lawyer with Guangdong Shangyuan Law Firm, sued a truck driver and an insurance company for compensation on behalf of a distant relative of Fan who was paralyzed after a traffic accident caused by the truck driver, the Daily Sunshine said yesterday.

Fan Yuxiang, the relative, was paralyzed after the vehicle she and her husband Luo Meilin were traveling in was hit by a small truck in Bao'an District on July 30, 2004.

On May 15, 2006, Bao'an District Court ordered the truck driver and the insurance company to pay the couple 280,000 yuan (US$36,223) in compensation. Two days after the ruling, the driver and the insurance company paid 80,000 yuan and 200,000 yuan respectively into a bank account which Fan Yun opened in the name of Fan Yuxiang without authorization from the couple.

Fan Yun then forged a court order which set the compensation amount at 156,369.31 yuan. He gave the couple the fake court order and told them the insurance company had appealed to the district intermediate court, and that the payment had been frozen pending the appeal.

After two years had passed and the couple had heard nothing from Fan Yun about the case, Luo took the fake order to the court. Judge Liu Yuan, who was in charge of the case two years before, noticed the order was different from the one she had provided the lawyer.

Fan Yun was detained April 18, 2007 over charges of forging the court order and cheating his client. The lawyer returned the compensation amount to Fan Yuxiang after his arrest, but was convicted of forging the court order.(Wei Jie)