The brand of iced tea that has landed Chinese thief Zhang Hao in hot water (Picture: CEN)

The criminal mastermind always makes one crucial mistake – and, in this case, it was a matter of simple mathematics.

It all started when 43-year-old Zhang Hoa was scavenging for recyclable bottles around a warehouse in Wenzhou in China’s Zhejiang Province.

He noticed that the warehouse door was unlocked and, on taking a peek inside, discovered the recycler’s equivalent of the Holy Grail: 30,000 pristine plastic bottles.

The only trouble for Zhang was that all the bottles contained iced tea. So he enlisted the help of three friends who, over the next 12 hours, unscrewed every bottle and poured the iced tea into a drain outside the warehouse.




From there the plan was simplicity itself – the men called a local plastic bottle collection firm to take the loot off their hands, and made off with a tidy £11 for their work.

Split four ways over 12 hours, that’s £2.75 each, or a little under 23p an hour.

It has to be said at this point that bottles of the iced tea sold for the equivalent of 66p, so Zhang could have made more if he stole a mere 17 bottles and sold them to his friends at market price.

Fast forward to when 38-year-old Liang Feng arrived at his warehouse, planning to pick up a pallet of the iced tea to sell to a customer. It would have been one of the all-time greatest facial expressions when he discovered his ENTIRE warehouse empty.

He immediately called the police, who were initially baffled by what appeared to be the perfect crime.

But then officers noticed a strong smell of iced tea at the crime scene, and then found a number of bottle tops outside.

Inquiries led them to a local collector who recycled a large number of identical bottles, and it didn’t take long to track down Zhang.

Police said no action would be taken against the recycling firms involved, or Zhang’s three friends, who had no idea that what they were doing was illegal.

Zhang on the other hand faces up to 10 years in jail.