A court in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu province, has sentenced nine people to jail for hacking and illegally acquiring online game accounts.

The Xiaguan District People's Court ruled on Friday that two men, surnamed Zhao and Yan, be given jail terms of three years and eight months and two and half years for hacking computer information, the court said Saturday in a written statement.

Yan, a programmer at a Beijing-based information technology company, acted on Zhao's request to crack programs and obtain users' passwords for online games including World of Warcraft and Maple Story from 2009 to 2010, the statement said.

By selling these accounts to new users, Yan got more than 200,000 yuan (31,508 U.S. dollars), and Zhao made 70,000 yuan, it said.

Seven people who bought the accounts from Zhao received jail terms ranging from one to four years for illegally acquiring data.

China's Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate in late August jointly issued a legal interpretation of the crime of endangering information network security, which took effect on Sept. 1. The interpretation clarifies criteria for imposing penalties in cases regarding illegally obtaining computer network data or providing hacking tools or programs.

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