Huo Xiaolu: The fourth major crime of helping others to commit crimes unexpectedly needs to be taken seriously and vigilant

This can be seen from the number of first-instance judgments on the crime of aiding and abetting trusts in the past five years, which has increased exponentially from 86 in 2019 to 2,607 in 2020 to 7,245 in 2021.

Note: The data comes from the Judgment Documents Network

Many people can’t help but wonder, will the crime of aiding and abetting become the next “pocket crime”?

Huo Xiaolu’s opinion is that it won’t.

It should be said that the surge in "assisting fraud" in the past two years is the result of the combined effects of the "epidemic" + "telecommunications network fraud" + "online gambling". The "card-cutting operation" by the public security organs has made a huge contribution to the increase in numbers.

For example, the fraud gang Z carried out telecommunications network fraud. The members of the Z gang went around looking for people to collect cards, and issued a set of four bank cards for 1k-2k. Every time the Z gang defrauded a sum of money, they quickly transferred it radially from A→B+C→D+E+F through the collected cards, and finally disappeared into the underworld. However, once the victim reported the case and the public security organs investigated, they found that most of the leaders of the Z gang had fled overseas long ago, and most of the money they defrauded could not be traced and their whereabouts were unknown.

What should we do? Should we just let it go? More and more fraud gangs, gambling gangs, and black market gangs are trying to evade legal responsibility by using the dark web and overseas. More and more people are being deceived, and the property losses are getting more and more serious. There must be a way to curb it, right?

Therefore, the application of the crime of aiding and abetting has become an effective path. By eliminating the "peripheral" criminals who provide bank cards and other card-making assistance to criminals, the core criminal gangs' "hands and feet" are cut off, making their capital chain unable to turn around and having nowhere to rely on, thus increasing the cost of crime and the risk of being caught, so that they dare not act rashly.

Some people say that this is a typical case of "if you can't catch the big fish, catch some small fish and shrimps". Yes, this is undoubtedly a "dimensionality reduction attack". But it is still a method. In order to highlight the difference in treatment under the criminal law, the maximum sentence for these "small fish and shrimps" is only 3 years, not 5 or 10 years like the fraudsters.

Why does Huo Xiaolu think that the crime of assisting others in obtaining credit cards will not become a pocket crime? It is related to the crackdown in the past two years and the improvement of the public's legal awareness. When everyone generally knows that some behaviors will be subject to criminal punishment, there will not be so many people taking risks for petty gains. I still remember that in 2018 and 2019, many college students thought that helping others to apply for credit cards and a set of 1k was an opportunity to make quick money part-time, and they even enjoyed it and mobilized their classmates around them. It was too ignorant and too terrible.

There is another very important reason. In the context of the severe crackdown in the past two years, the identification standard of aiding and abetting crime is relatively loose. With the effectiveness of the crackdown and the deepening of legal education, the identification standard will gradually tighten. How to say it? There is a requirement for the conviction of aiding and abetting crime, that is, the perpetrator must be "knowingly" aware that the other party is using the information network to carry out criminal activities.

This "knowingly" is very difficult. Usually after being caught, who will take the initiative to admit that, yes, I knew that person was committing a crime. This is basically impossible. If it happens, the investigators are lucky.

Taking the card application as an example, the more common situations you may encounter are:

A said: Z is my classmate, he is a businessman, we haven't been in touch for a while. He said his card was restricted and he needed the card to raise funds, so I lent it to him.

B said: The other party said that he needed to apply for another card to apply for a loan, so I applied for it for him and gave him the U-Shield and other things.

C said: They said it was a part-time job, 2k for a set and 0.5k for each person recommended, so I went to apply, but I don’t know what it was used for.

……………………

These excuses are usually considered as sophistry or obviously unreasonable excuses by the case handlers. They don’t want to waste any more words. Just one sentence, “Do you think people with normal logic would do this? Is it so easy to make money?”, and then it is presumed to be “knowingly”. If it also involves natural sensitive areas such as “virtual currency”, it will be even more difficult to distance yourself from the relationship. As long as the card flow is sufficient, or the card is profitable, you will be convicted. Then there is a confession of guilt and a wave of skilled assembly line operations, and the case will soon be brought to court.

After this wave of severe crackdowns, I believe that the law enforcement agencies, especially the procuratorate, will tighten their subjective determination of "knowingly" and filter out more situations that are not suitable for criminal prosecution.

However, at present, we still need to pay enough attention and be vigilant. Cherish life, stay away from the "two cards" and stay away from Bangxin.