TWO fake gun-wielding gangsters enlisted to help kidnap a terrified student in a bid to get his £20,000 tuition fees have failed to win time off their jail terms at the Court of Appeal.
A top judge ruled the pair’s role in the carefully executed plot, which left the victim suicidal, was so serious that their sentences did not even come close to being ‘manifestly excessive’ as their legal teams had argued.
Sin Jung Lin, 27, of Sunningdale Close, Wrexham, and Xiao Bo Yan, also 27, of no fixed abode, both admitted possessing an imitation firearm, three counts of false imprisonment, one of blackmail, two of robbery and one of kidnap.
They were jailed for 11 years and 11-and-a-half years respectively at Leicester Crown Court in August last year.
Mrs Justice Rafferty, sitting with Lady Justice Hallett and Judge Richard Brown at London’s Appeal Court, heard that in September 2007, Yan, Lin and the gang’s ringleader travelled to Loughborough, where their victim was a student, and burst into his home wielding imitation guns.
Pressurised by the gangsters, he transferred £14,000 into his current account, and told them he would contact his parents to get hold of the remaining £6,000.
The trio took him to London – where Lin was dropped off – and the remaining two set about extracting the money from various post offices and financial institutions.
Eventually they allowed their victim to travel back to university – but first made him take hold of a gun they claimed had been used in a murder, threatening to hand it over to police with his fingerprints on it if he did not hand over the rest of the cash.
Mrs Justice Rafferty said the whole experience was “long and drawn out” for the victim and although the only violence used was a punch thrown by the ringleader, the enterprise was “professional, determined and terrifying.”