A 19-year-old girl, who earned nearly 100,000 yuan through online fraud, has been sentenced to three years in prison on Thursday in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, southern China.

Yang Cailan, of Fangchenggang City, was sentenced for claiming that her father died in the Tianjin blasts last year, according to Chinese state media. Apparently, her pretensions enabled her to swindle 96,576 yuan from netizens who sympathized with her.

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Yang reportedly published two posts on Sina Weibo early in August 13, 2015, saying that she lost communication with her father - whom she claims was working near the blast site - a day after the explosions occurred. The explosions killed 173 people, the Fangchenggang District People's Court said.

Initially, Yang was merely trying to get people's attention. However, when she found out that Weibo had a tipping function, she decided to dishonestly gain money by swindling readers.

In her third and final fake post, Yang said that she was finally able to locate her father, who was dying in a hospital.

That post was read more than two million times, getting Yang the attention that she was looking for. It reportedly circulated rapidly, successfully prompting more than 3,700 Weibo users to give her the money that she wanted.

When Yang was arrested in August, she claimed that her Weibo account had been accessed by someone without permission. She added that she has not been able to use it since the end of 2012, the court said.

Weibo has since then closed Yang's account, and all the money that she raised was returned to the unsupecting donors, according to Xinhua.

Yang, who is unemployed, was fined 8,000 yuan in addition to the three-year sentence. Her phone, which she used in her swindling, was also confiscated by authorities.

Yang did not say if she will appeal the sentence.

TagsYang Cailan, tianjin blast, Fraud