A man in Xiamen, China, stole and sold virtual currency worth over 1.6 million yuan and was sentenced to 11 years in prison

BlockBeats News, April 19th: According to the Xiamen Procuratorate's WeChat official account, in September 2021, the defendant, a man surnamed Chen, was introduced to the victim, a man surnamed Hong, through a friend. At that time, Hong had a strong interest in cryptocurrency investment, and Chen had some knowledge in this area. Hong entrusted Chen to help with cryptocurrency investment and unguardedly shared his account and login password with him.

While assisting a friend with futures investment, Chen encountered heavy losses and was overwhelmed by debt, which led him to have evil thoughts. At the end of September 2022, Chen fabricated a lie about the account being disconnected, used this to deceive Hong into providing various verification codes, then successfully changed the account's login password and switched the bound email to his own. Subsequently, Chen repeatedly used the excuse of the account being disconnected to continuously transfer the cryptocurrency in Hong's account to his own account using real-time verification codes. He quickly sold these cryptocurrencies, earning over 1.6 million RMB in profits, all of which were used to repay personal debts.

The Huli District Procuratorate prosecuted Chen for theft. According to Article 264 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, whoever steals public or private property in a particularly large amount or with other particularly serious circumstances shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years, life imprisonment, or death, and shall also be fined or have their property confiscated.

After trial, the court sentenced Chen to eleven years in prison and imposed a fine for the crime of theft.