OK temporarily withdraws coins Huobi frequently freezes cards The truth of the "card freezing trend" in the eyes of criminal lawyers

Introduction: Bitcoin prices have been rising, but China's cryptocurrency industry seems to have entered a dangerous winter. OKEx has suspended withdrawals due to the investigation of its founder, Xu Mingxing. Huobi, as the largest OTC platform, has friends around me experiencing frozen credit cards almost every day. There have been many rumors about the "frozen credit card trend" since this year. What is the truth? Let's listen to Lawyer Huobi's views.

Disclaimer: The author of this article, Huo Xiaolu, has exclusively authorized "Wu Shuo Blockchain" to reprint it. Please contact me for any commercial or non-commercial reprinting. Infringement will be pursued.

Since September, a new wave of card freezing has arrived, which is said to be the strongest in history .

In October, the Ministry of Public Security announced its intention to launch a "card-cutting" operation.

Freezing credit cards is not new in the cryptocurrency world. But once it happens, people are still panicked. Cutting off credit cards sounds even more intimidating at first. The combination of the two seems to mean a brutal reshuffle of the industry.

What exactly happened? You might as well follow Huo Xiaolu’s careful analysis to avoid believing in online rumors and hurting yourself for no reason, and to prevent it in advance.

This wave of news has to start with the foreign trade industry. Since September, many foreign trade accounts have been frozen. During the National Day holiday, an article titled "The reason for the large-scale freezing of foreign trade accounts has been found" went viral on WeChat Moments. Huo Xiaolu read the article, but unfortunately, he only read one-third of it and thought it was not rigorous enough, so he closed it. Now I want to analyze it more carefully, but I found that the article has been reported, so it is considered "dead without evidence."

Fortunately, there are still some articles on major websites. If you look closely, most of them attribute the core reason for this wave of card freezing to the revision of the "Procedures for Handling Criminal Cases by Public Security Organs", which was officially implemented on September 1. They believe that the "culprit" is the "expansion of public security jurisdiction" and the "decentralization of card freezing authority" .

Huo Xiaolu felt that this reason was a bit far-fetched.

It is believed online that since the victims of telecommunications fraud cases are spread all over the country, the Ministry of Public Security has increased the number of public security agencies with jurisdiction from a very small number to most parts of the country.

The reason is that the "Procedures for Handling Criminal Cases by Public Security Organs" added Article 17 on the basis of the original Article 16, adding the jurisdiction of several types of local public security organs, including "the location of the network service provider", "the location where the victim was infringed and the location where the victim's property suffered losses".

In addition, the new regulations were officially implemented on September 1, which coincided with the time when the card freezing wave occurred. It is inferred that the sudden increase in card freezing was caused by the new regulations.

In fact, this has been the case since the old rules . Words are not enough, so here is a comparison chart of the new and old rules.

Simply comparing the old Article 16 with the new Article 17 could indeed lead to the mistaken impression that more jurisdiction is given to public security organs in more regions.

But looking back, the original Article 15 and the current Article 16. The content of these two articles remains unchanged, only the underlined content is added, which is considered to be further refined. I believe that the most intuitive feeling of ordinary people after reading this article can even be simply and roughly summarized in one sentence, that is, any public security agency that is related to any link or node of criminal activities has jurisdiction. Basically, all the places that ordinary people can think of are included, but the terms are more written and abstract. When I worked in the procuratorate in my early years, I often encountered situations where several police officers competed for a case. The "place where the crime results occurred" mentioned therein is clearly defined as including the place where the object of the crime was infringed, the place where the proceeds of the crime were actually obtained, etc. The literal translation is not the location of the victim and the place where the property was lost, but it is not clearly stated.

There is also the possibility that the public security organs in different regions have different understandings of the legal provisions. However, we can only say that some earlier judicial interpretations and internal legal documents have already repeatedly pointed out the jurisdiction of the public security organs in relevant cases, and it may be that there is no time to carefully study a batch of regulations.

The so-called "expansion of the jurisdiction of public security organs" is somewhat out of context.

It is also believed online that the sudden increase in card freezing is due to the "decentralization of card freezing authority" to the heads of public security agencies at or above the county level.

Still look at the comparison chart.

The so-called "freezing of credit cards" is legally called "freezing of deposits", etc. The authority has not changed and has always been set at the public security organs at the county level and above. Only freezing of equity, etc., requires approval from a higher-level public security organ.

Nowadays, almost everyone has a bank card, and "freezing the card" has become the most basic and routine operation to intercept funds. Therefore, the required authority will not be set too high to prevent the approval process from being too long to keep up with the speed of the circulation of stolen money.

Why has the number of “frozen cards” increased recently? The main reason is the new round or another round of crackdowns since this year, which have continued to crack down on telecommunications network fraud and online black industries. The Dongguan incident in March must still be vivid in the minds of people in the industry. In fact, not only the foreign trade circle, the currency circle, the online loan circle, but even the traditional financial circle are implicated, because they all involve strong capital flows. The continued high incidence of fraud cases, the emergence of new crimes, the emergence of various “plates”, the overall economic situation is sluggish, and the work of recovering stolen money is extremely difficult. Under various reasons, although the “frozen card” is simple and crude, it is also the most effective.

On October 10, the State Council held a national "Card Cutting" action deployment meeting of the inter-ministerial joint meeting on combating new types of crimes in telecommunications networks. At the meeting, Du Hangwei, deputy minister of the Ministry of Public Security, said that it is necessary to strengthen the sense of mission, responsibility and urgency of carrying out the "Card Cutting" action, and severely crack down on and rectify the illegal opening and selling of phone cards and bank cards. It is also required to strengthen credit punishment, and implement punitive measures such as suspending the non-counter business of bank accounts and all businesses of payment accounts for five years and prohibiting the opening of new accounts for units and individuals and related organizers identified by public security organs as renting, selling, lending, or purchasing bank accounts or payment accounts, and units and individuals who impersonate others or fictitious agency relationships to open bank accounts or payment accounts .

The so-called "card cutting" refers to the illegal opening and selling of phone cards and bank cards. It is mainly to combat telecommunications network crimes, including cross-border network crimes. In this type of crime, criminals often purchase a large number of bank cards and phone cards to transfer stolen money. Simple one-to-one payment is easy to trace and easy to be alarmed by the risk control system. In order to avoid being noticed, criminals use a layer-by-layer decentralized dismemberment method, one-to-many, or many-to-many payment. Therefore, more payment channels, namely bank cards, are needed. In the industry jargon, it is called a personal "four-piece set" or a corporate "eight-piece set".

The "card-cutting" operation was only proposed in October, but there were early signs . First, telecom network crimes have been rampant in recent years and have always been the focus of crackdowns. In particular, cross-border network crimes are difficult to track down, and the focus of crackdowns has naturally shifted to downstream crimes, trying to cut off the flow of funds so that criminals cannot pool funds. Second, at the end of 2019, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate jointly issued the "Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Laws in Handling Criminal Cases of Illegal Use of Information Networks and Assistance in Information Network Criminal Activities", which targets such downstream criminal activities. According to past practice, once the interpretation is issued, there will inevitably be a wave of related crimes that will be severely cracked down in batches. Third, in the past two years, many ignorant college students have mistakenly thought that they were part-time workers helping to open bank cards and resell them, indirectly becoming accomplices of the black industry, and even worse, they want to make quick money from the black. Against this background, the Ministry of Public Security proposed the "card-cutting" operation, which is also traceable.

There is a certain connection, but they are not the same concept.

Freezing a card is a compulsory measure . If the funds in the card involve black money, the card may be frozen, but it does not mean that the cardholder is suspected of committing a crime .

The card disconnection is mainly aimed at illegal and criminal activities. Those who illegally open bank cards and provide assistance to cybercrime activities may be suspected of assisting information network criminal activities and other crimes.

What to do if you encounter a "frozen card"? There are various methods circulating on the Internet. I will not elaborate here. If you are interested, you can read "Virtual Currency || Bank Card Frozen? What to do?". An additional reminder: "Freezing the card" is only a compulsory measure and does not mean suspected crime. The actual operation of public security organs in different regions is different, and the response strategies are also different. For some obviously unreasonable requests, we should resolutely resist. If you have any questions, consult professionals in time.

In addition to "disconnecting cards", what other warnings are there? In fact, the "disconnecting card" action may be just one dimension. Telecom network fraud and even online black industries have long since gradually shifted from traditional bank cards to payment codes, which is the so-called "running points" movement. Therefore, third-party and fourth-party payment platforms may become the next outlet , and we need to be vigilant. The freezing of related accounts and centralized rectification may not be far away.