The most bizarre blackmail case in the A-share market? Hongri Pharmaceutical's secretary was blackmailed for 2,099 bitcoins

Recently, the Secretary to the Board Academy discovered an interesting litigation dispute between a natural person Du Bing and a listed company Hongri Pharmaceutical ( 3.260 , -0.04 , -1.21% ) . Zheng Dan, the former secretary of the board of directors of Hongri Pharmaceutical, also served as an intermediary and became the main contact person for blackmail. Now Zheng Dan has resigned from the position of secretary to the board of directors and serves as the general manager of the company.

According to the criminal ruling issued by the People's Procuratorate of Wuhou District, Chengdu:

At the end of 2014, the defendant Du Bing used a VPN to find internal information such as lists of gifts in business dealings and documents on improper business practices of Hongri Pharmaceutical on a search engine, and downloaded all of them to his hard drive.

In December 2014, the defendant Du Bing found the email address of Zheng, the secretary of the board of directors of Hongri Pharmaceutical, through the Internet, and sent an email to him using the email address u88×××@mail.com, demanding money for exposing the above information of Hongri Pharmaceutical, but the company ignored it.

Du Bing then posted a message on Tianya Forum and attached a screenshot of the company's business expense list. After the company found the post on Tianya Forum, it decided to have Zheng contact Du Bing and said he was willing to spend 300,000 yuan to resolve the matter.

Du Bing proposed that he needed 3 million yuan to settle the case, and asked for payment in Bitcoin. (Later, during the defense, Du Bing's defense lawyer said that Bitcoin is not protected by the criminal law and does not have property attributes. It is probably because of this that he did not want money, but Bitcoin.)

After evaluation, Hongri Pharmaceutical was forced to agree to the defendant Du Bing's request. Du Bing then contacted Zheng several times via email and taught Zheng how to buy and pay for Bitcoin.

On January 9, 2015, Hongri Pharmaceutical deposited 300,000 yuan into the bank account of its employee Wang, and on May 13 of the same year, transferred 2.7 million yuan to Wang's account.

Zheng used the funds in Wang's personal bank account to spend 3 million yuan to purchase 2101.209 bitcoins and transferred 2099.7 of them to the paper wallet address provided by Du Bing. After "rongbi", they were transferred to Du Bing's [email protected] account on Huobi.com.

Du Bing sold the 2099.7 bitcoins and cashed them into his CCB card ( ending with number 3854) and ABC card (ending with number 9374 ) , earning more than 2 million yuan. (He spent 3 million yuan to buy bitcoins, but ended up selling them for 2 million yuan.)

The highest price of one Bitcoin in 2017 was close to 20,000 US dollars. If this guy did not move, he could cash out for about 260 million yuan at most.

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Bitcoin chart

After obtaining 2 million yuan in stolen money, the defendant Du Bing used 300,000 yuan of the above money to pay the down payment for a house in Chengdu Tianfu New District, and used the rest of the money to buy a BMW X5 car (Sichuan A×××××), make time deposits, repay personal debts and for personal consumption.

During the original trial, the BMW X5 car and real estate purchased by the defendant Du Bing with the stolen money were seized, and his bank deposits of more than 400,000 yuan were frozen.

In the end, the defendant Du Bing was convicted of extortion and sentenced to 13 years in prison and a fine of 50,000 yuan.

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Zheng Dan, former board secretary of Hongri Pharmaceutical

According to the information, Zheng Dan is a female born in February 1964 and graduated from graduate school. She was once the executive director and vice president of Tianjin TEDA Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and the general manager of Beijing TEDA Biotechnology Engineering Co., Ltd. She started to serve as the company's deputy general manager and secretary of the board of directors in 2013. After resigning from the position of secretary of the company in June 2017, she continued to serve as the company's director and general manager. When she was the company's secretary of the board of directors, Zheng Dan received a salary of 3.41 million yuan in 2016, which was an absolutely high-paid secretary of the board of directors.

Hongri Pharmaceutical was founded in 1996 and is located in Wuqing Development Zone, Tianjin. In terms of performance, the company is a listed company with good fundamentals. In 2017, the net profit attributable to shareholders was 451 million yuan, and in the first three quarters of 2018, the net profit attributable to shareholders was 463 million yuan. As far as the extortion of 3 million yuan is concerned, there is not much pressure.

It is worth noting that in March 2014, several media outlets published articles pointing out that Hongri Pharmaceutical's exclusive product Xuebijing Injection entered the Guangdong Essential Medicines List through illegal channels, but the company quickly made a clarification.

Of course, because the amount is small, the company did not make any announcement on this.