Panda hackers return to jail for online gambling

Two Chinese hackers, previously imprisoned for creating the notorious computer virus "joss-stick burning panda", were sentenced to jail terms on Wednesday for running online gambling games.

Zhang Shun and Li Jun were sentenced to five and three years as well as fined 200,000 and 80,000 yuan (about 33,060 and 13,224 U.S. dollars) respectively, according to Liandu District People's Court of Lishui City in east China's Zhejiang Province.

They were guilty of running a gambling operation.

The two criminals were creators of "joss-stick burning panda" that damaged millions of computers in 2006 and 2007. They were imprisoned for two and three years for their crimes in 2007.

After their release, they ran an online gaming company, which operated several card games that allowed players to gamble using virtual chips.

Twenty-four others were also punished in court for their part in the gambling company.

A large number of people people played the games and a total of 76 million yuan was staked. The company raked in lots of money by selling the chips.

Li came to public attention in 2010 when he made a cash donation to a research base for giant pandas as an act of remorse for making the virus, which he named after the endangered animals.

The virus, which changed icons on desktops into cartoon pandas holding three burning joss-sticks wreaked havoc by deleting files, damaging programs and stealing information from gaming and messenger accounts.