An unemployed man has been sentenced to 39 months in prison for swindling 223,800 yuan ($36,524) worth of luxury goods from his former employer, a district court said Friday.

The 26-year-old defendant, whom the court called Chen Su, was charged with fraud, according to a press release from Jing'an District People's Court.

Chen tricked the staff at the Shanghai office of a Beijing-based consignment company into giving him two luxury watches and two belts by pretending to be an employee from the head office, the press release said.

Chen had worked for the company in Shanghai for eight months after moving to the city in August 2012. After resigning, he idled his time away at Internet bars until he ran short of money. Unable to make ends meet, he hatched a plan to rip off his former employer.

The company, which was not identified, had a business finding buyers and sellers for specific luxury items.

On March 30, Chen called the company's Shanghai office posing as an employee in Beijing. He asked the Shanghai staff to send him a 92,000-yuan Rolex watch, a 120,000-yuan Omega watch and two Hermes leather belts worth 6,000 yuan each, claiming that a client in Beijing wanted to buy them. The deception worked because Chen still knew the company's internal code numbers for the items. The court said the Shanghai employee never questioned his request.

At 5 pm on the same day, Chen called the Shanghai office again and asked the employee to send the items to a place near Changfeng Park in Putuo district, claiming that the client had arrived in Shanghai.

Chen asked one of his friends to pick up the items around 10 am the next day.

Chen sold the watches online for 128,000 yuan. He sold the belts for 9,500 yuan to a secondhand luxury goods store. The consignment company called the police after an employee discovered the four items were missing.

Police caught Chen at a bus station in Liyang, Jiangsu Province on April 27.

Chen had repaid the company 137,000 yuan with the help of his family before the court issued its sentence. The court ordered Chen to repay the remaining 87,000 yuan.