SHANGHAI, CHINA - A Chinese man has been sentenced to two years in jail for hacking into a Red Cross website and asking for earthquake relief donations to be sent to his bank account, state media reported Saturday.

Yang Litao, 23, was found guilty of fraud and sentenced on Friday by a court in eastern Jiangsu province, the Xinhua news agency reported.

He hacked into the Red Cross's local site in Kunshan city, near Shanghai, six days after the May 12 quake in Sichuan province, the report said.

The quake, measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, left nearly 88,000 people dead or missing, and up to five million others homeless.

Yang stole the site administrator's identity and password and then posted a fake notice asking for donations to be deposited in his account, the report said.

He also loaded a virus onto the website and ended up forcing it to shut down for 27 hours during the relief operations, the report said.

However authorities caught him before any donations made it to his account, the report said. --AFP