A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for holding a toy gun to a man's head and stealing his backpack unaware, he says, that it contained HK$1.7 million (about US$218,000) in cash.

Xie Wei carried out the robbery on January 9 in a parking lot of a bank in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, and fled with the rucksack, Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court heard.

Xie told the court that he was oblivious to the amount of money stashed inside the backpack and said he would decide whether or not to appeal in the near future.

The court also heard that Xie snatched a diamond ring and a platinum necklace - with a combined value of 129,550 yuan - from a shop in Guangzhou on September 14 last year.

Xie was seized by police on January 25 this year and was discovered to be in possession of 1.61 million yuan, the backpack owner's mobile phone, a laptop, and a pair of diamond rings that were bought with the stolen money.

Xie's family paid 60,000 yuan in compensation to the victims.

The court said Xie was "treated with leniency" because he confessed to the crimes, most of the money had been retrieved and his family had offered compensation.

(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2007)