|
The Lvben Lawyers team specializes in handling legal services for frozen bank cards. Many people who engage in virtual currency/digital currency transactions have their accounts frozen by the court. What crimes are generally suspected during the transaction process? What are the legal risks? The Lvben Lawyers team will share some experiences with you based on many actual cases handled in the past. According to relevant statistics, as of 12:00 on May 31, 2020, there are 5,530 currencies in the global digital currency market. The total market value is $270,867,971,351 (about $270.9 billion). This week, the total market value of digital currencies has increased by about $14.1 billion compared with last week, an increase of about 5.48%. As of the early morning of June 3, 2020, the three virtual currencies ranked by market value are Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether USD. Among them, Bitcoin ranks first with a circulating market value of 1.22 trillion, becoming the well-deserved leader. As a product of e-commerce, virtual currency has begun to play an increasingly important role, and it is increasingly intersecting with the real world. However, as virtual currency grows, relevant regulations are relatively lagging behind, which has buried many hidden dangers and many legal risks. The investment value of virtual currency
Private transactions of virtual currencies online have, to a certain extent, achieved two-way circulation between virtual currencies and RMB.
The activities of these traders are manifested in purchasing various virtual currencies and virtual products at low prices, and then selling them at high prices, relying on this price difference to make profits.
However, with the increase in such transactions and the particularity of such transactions, many legal risks have gradually emerged. Money laundering (the most common situation for virtual currency trading platforms to encounter or be implicated)
The crime of money laundering refers to the act of providing a financial account, or assisting in converting property into cash, financial bills, or securities, or assisting in transferring funds through wire transfer or other settlement methods, or assisting in remitting funds abroad, or concealing the source and nature of criminal proceeds and their proceeds by other means, knowing that the proceeds and their proceeds are illegal proceeds from drug crimes, organized crime of a mafia nature, terrorist activities, smuggling crimes, corruption and bribery crimes, crimes that disrupt financial management order, and financial fraud crimes.
In recent years, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have seen an astonishing price surge, which has attracted not only investors, but also speculators and criminal teams or money laundering teams. In 2018, CipherTrace, a US company specializing in blockchain anti-money laundering, released a digital cryptocurrency anti-money laundering report. The data showed that in the past two years, hackers have stolen more than $1.2 billion in stolen money from exchanges, as well as countless offline stolen money and ransoms, and other digital cryptocurrencies through exchanges and money laundering service providers. Exchanges, gambling websites/fraud gangs/criminal gangs, and cheap blockchain transfers allow stolen money to quickly go from black to white.
Therefore, in the actual transaction process, there are often many fraud gangs, gambling gangs or money laundering teams that specialize in using virtual currency transactions to launder money or transfer stolen money, which in turn leads to the freezing of the counterparty's funds.
Let's look at a typical case of money laundering fraud through virtual currency :
After the criminal suspect X successfully defrauded A using an online chat tool, he asked A to transfer 1 million yuan to B's account (usually a stolen or borrowed account). B's account (which was cancelled or abandoned after the transfer) then transferred the full amount to three different accounts C, D, and E. Among them, C's account (which was cancelled or abandoned after the transfer) conducted legal currency transactions on the virtual currency platform. After purchasing several Tether coins, he transferred the funds in his name to the bank account or Alipay account of the trading party F. If the trading party F had other transactions on the same day, the funds would be transferred to G.
If the victim A finds out that he has been cheated and reports the case to the public security organ, after the public security organ examines and files a case, the public security organ will conduct judicial freezing of the lower-level account of A's defrauded funds according to its local policy. Generally, at least three levels of accounts will be frozen, and there is a public security organ.
In the whole process, A is the victim, X is the criminal, B is the first-level account associated with the victim's money, C, D, E are second-level accounts, F is a third-level account, and G is a fourth-level account. F and G may have their bank cards frozen due to this case, which will affect their normal business.
At present, when public security organs across the country are cracking down on fraud and gambling cases, they often directly freeze multi-level accounts, resulting in the freezing of many ordinary people's accounts.
In such cases, the terminals or servers of the fraud gangs or gambling teams are often located abroad, and many cases are almost impossible to solve. The parties are repeatedly obstructed in handling their legal financial accounts without entrusting professional lawyers. Some are often subject to criminal detention, administrative detention or special restrictions due to inappropriate communication and handling methods.
Our legal team has successfully handled many cases involving third- and fourth-level accounts such as F and G, focusing on organizing and summarizing evidence materials, controlling the rhythm of communication, and implementing unfreezing solutions. Crime of assisting information network criminal activities
The crime of assisting information network criminal activities refers to the act of knowingly providing Internet access, server hosting, network storage, communication transmission and other technical support for others to commit crimes through information networks, or providing assistance such as advertising promotion and payment settlement.
Among them, if one is aware that the other party is using virtual currency to launder money, and assists the criminal team in transferring funds through over-the-counter transactions or without actually delivering the consideration, it may not only lead to the freezing of funds, but also may be suspected of committing the crime of assisting information network criminal activities.
In practice, some people had their bank cards frozen and went to local public security organs to take statements. The public security organs then took corresponding measures based on the crime according to the statements of the parties involved. Crime of organizing and leading pyramid selling activities
Pyramid schemes are called the cancer of the economy. In fact, not only in the traditional economic field, with the rapid development of blockchain in recent years, some pyramid schemes have transformed themselves into blockchain organizations. They use the guise of blockchain, which ordinary people don’t know much about, as bait with high rebates, and then adopt corporate operations. At the same time, they invite well-known "successful people" to stand on the platform. After all the "false prosperity" face projects are ready, they still use the most primitive "unlimited development of downlines" to spread.
The reporter of the Daily Economic News found through the China Judgment Documents Network that in 2018, there were as many as 166 cases of virtual currency pyramid schemes in my country. There were 94 cases in 2017, 46 cases in 2016, 10 cases in 2015, and 5 cases in 2014. The average annual growth rate in recent years has exceeded 100%. According to the 166 virtual currency pyramid schemes in 2018, after only a few years, virtual currency pyramid schemes have accounted for nearly 5% of the total pyramid schemes in my country (166/3612), which is an astonishing growth.
Typical ones are:
The "iBank Smart Wallet" pyramid scheme platform used digital currency to develop more than 100,000 pyramid scheme members, with the funds involved reaching more than 300 million yuan. It developed 65 levels of pyramid scheme members, and absorbed a total of 360,000 digital currencies ETH (Ethereum), 593 BTC (Bitcoin), and 42.91 million XRP (Ripple). Calculated based on the lowest market value of each digital currency during the platform's operation, the cumulative amount was 300 million yuan.
The final ruling of the "Yayuan" pyramid scheme, which has developed more than 230,000 members and attracted nearly 800 million yuan in funds. As the head of the Yayuan pyramid scheme, Lan Xinmin was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison and fined RMB 3 million for organizing and leading pyramid schemes.
Fraud or illegal fund-raising
In the past two years, Bitcoin has soared, and virtual currencies have poured out overnight. Many fraud gangs use the high-sounding cloaks of blockchain and digital encryption to take advantage of ordinary investors' lack of understanding of virtual currencies and blockchain to commit fraud.
Common scams are:
The criminal gang recommended APP investment products to customers, mainly through the purchase of "virtual currency" in US dollars. The virtual currency has a large increase in value. The money earned can be withdrawn at any time by paying a small handling fee. As long as you open an account according to the requirements and transfer money to the designated account, you can make a profit without loss. In the early operation process, the investment will increase exponentially, and then customers will often increase their investment. But later, the account was frozen, the "virtual currency" in it was emptied, they were kicked out of the group chat, and their friends were deleted. What they waited for was nothing.
Recently, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and five other departments issued a warning that some criminals, under the banner of "financial innovation" and "blockchain", have raised funds by issuing so-called "virtual currency", "virtual assets" and "digital assets", infringing on the legitimate rights and interests of the public. Such activities are not truly based on blockchain technology, but are hype blockchain concepts to engage in illegal fundraising, pyramid schemes and fraud, with the following main characteristics:
First, it is network-based and cross-border. Relying on the Internet and chat tools to conduct transactions and using online payment tools to receive and pay funds, the risks are widespread and spread quickly. Some criminals rent overseas servers to build websites and carry out illegal activities for domestic residents. Some individuals claim in chat tool groups that they have obtained investment quotas for high-quality overseas blockchain projects and can invest on their behalf. This is most likely a fraudulent activity. The funds defrauded by these illegal activities mostly flow overseas, making supervision and tracking difficult.
Second, they are highly deceptive, tempting, and concealed. They use hot concepts to hype, and some even use celebrities to promote, using airdrops of "candy" as temptations, claiming that "the currency value will only rise and not fall" and "the investment cycle is short, the returns are high, and the risks are low", which is highly deceptive. In actual operations, criminals illegally make huge profits by manipulating the price trends of so-called virtual currencies behind the scenes, setting profit and withdrawal thresholds, and other means. In addition, some criminals also issue virtual currencies under various new names, or hype virtual currencies under the banner of the sharing economy, which is highly concealed and confusing.
Third, there are multiple illegal risks. Through public propaganda, criminals use "static income" (profit from currency appreciation) and "dynamic income" (profit from developing downlines) as bait to attract the public to invest money, and induce investors to recruit personnel to join, and continuously expand the capital pool, which has the characteristics of illegal fundraising, pyramid selling, fraud and other illegal activities.
|
