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<hr class="displayNone"> <!-- First Image Width= 230 --> China farmer in court for faked rare tiger photos
4:21PM Saturday Sep 27, 2008
<!-- Ixt1--> BEIJING - A Chinese farmer who claimed to have taken photos of a rare tiger went on trial Saturday for faking the pictures, state media said.
Zhou Zhenglong was being tried for fraud in the Xunyang County People's Court in Shaanxi province, the Xinhua News Agency said.
According to official media accounts, Zhou, aged 54, heard that a reward of more than 1 million yuan ($215,000) had been offered for anyone who found an endangered South China tiger in the wild, where one had not been seen for more than 20 years.
Last October, he emerged from the woods in Shaanxi with his claim of a tiger sighting, plus dozens of digital photos. He was rewarded by the provincial forestry department with 20,000 yuan.
While first intrigued, China's online community quickly exposed the animal as a paper tiger - an old poster propped up among the trees - because it was too shiny and did not change its position no matter where it was snapped.
The public called for an official investigation when someone produced an old poster with a photo that looked strikingly like Zhou's tiger and posted it online.
Police arrested him after seizing the old tiger poster, which Zhou allegedly borrowed from a farmer in another village, Xinhua said. They also found a wooden model of a tiger claw that Zhou allegedly used to fake a paw print in the snow, it said.
Telephone calls to the court were not answered on Saturday.
- AP