BEIJING — A Chinese farmer has been sentenced to life in prison for avoiding highway tolls adding up to more than $530,000 by pretending his trucks were military vehicles.

State media reported that Shi Jianfeng was convicted of fraud for using fake military license plates and uniforms to deceive toll collectors into thinking his vehicles were military-owned, and therefore exempt from charges. In this way, he avoided paying tolls more than 2,300 times. A court in the central province of Henan sentenced Shi to jail and also fined him $302,000 on Dec. 21, the media report said this week.

The news caused an uproar among some Chinese, who argued in online postings and commentaries that shorter sentences have been given out for the more serious crimes of rape or murder.

MADRID — A Spanish judge has indicted John Demjanjuk on charges of being an accessory to genocide and crimes against humanity while serving as a Nazi concentration camp guard.The 90-year-old former Ohio autoworker is being tried in Germany on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder while a guard at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp. He denies the charges.