A 33-year-old man from Shandong province was taken into custody for stealing 2-kg bars of gold worth more than 621,000 yuan ($93,685) from four outlets in Shanghai by printing his own receipts.

The man hit on the idea in October when he purchased a 10-gram bar from a souvenir stand at the World Expo in Shanghai, at which time he noticed that the customer assistants did not accompany him to the cashier or carefully examine his receipt.

To carry out his plan, he rented an apartment in Kunshan, a city near Shanghai. He would go out and purchase small items from shops in Shanghai, which he used as a blueprint for counterfeit receipts that he printed from his computer.

With the preparations out of the way, he was finally ready to implement his plan on Dec 25, when he struck at four gold outlets in Shanghai.

The stores reported the thefts to the police and the suspect was captured on Dec 31, as he was depositing money into a bank in Tianjin municipality.

After word of the incident spread, a number of gold outlets in the city have taken measures to prevent the incident from being repeated.