And I wonder what they were paying him for?

This from boingboing, with the comment, "It was inevitable":

Phonecam pics accepted as court evidence in China

Beijing Haidian People's Court yesterday held a session in a case that involves Mr. Wu Mingming, a furniture manufacturer, who had bilked two students' parents of about RMB180000 by pretending he was a secretary of an Education Minister in China. One of the students submitted a photo taken with a mobile phone as evidence. The photo is a small one, but it shows one of the parents handing money to the defendant, Mr. Wu. The parent said he took the photo because Mr. Wu refused to give him an invoice, and he was afraid he would be cheated.

So far, no judgment has been made in the case. This is the first documented time that mobile phone photos have been submitted as evidence in a court in Beijing.

Source identified as China Tech News.

These concentricities of irony baffle and awe me. I just live for them. It makes futility seem approachable. I read another story moments ago about how a head of a relics protection department at a former Chinese imperial palace has been sentenced to death for stealing the artifacts he was meant to protect. He was found guilty of stealing hundreds of relics which he replaced with fakes and sold (knockoffs in China are fairly easy to find, but this is pretty extreme).

Ai-yah. We appropriate what we should protect and the penalty is death...whether we do or not.