A court in China has prosecuted a man who stole cryptocurrency from a friend and cashed in more than 1.6 million yuan from the crypto crime.
Recently, the Huli District Procuratorate of Xiamen, China, investigated the case and has filed a public prosecution against the accused, Chen, for the crime of theft. According to Article 264 of the Criminal Law, depending on the gravity of the theft, the offender can be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of more than ten years or life imprisonment and shall be fined or have his property confiscated.
According to local media reports, back in September 2021, the defendant Chen met the victim Hong through a friend’s introduction. At that time, Hong had a strong interest in crypto investment, and Chen was quite experienced in it. Hong then entrusted Chen to help operate the cryptocurrency investment and also provided his account number and login password.
In June 2022, Chen suffered losses while helping his friend invest in futures and was in debt, which encouraged him to steal the crypto in Hong’s account.
At the end of September 2022, Chen lied to Hong that his account was offline to get a hold of various verification codes from Hong. Later, Chen successfully changed the account’s login password and replaced the email address bound to the account with his own.
After gaining access to Hong’s account, Chen repeatedly used the excuse of “account disconnection” to obtain Hong’s real-time verification code and continued to transfer the virtual currency in Hong’s account to his own account. He then quickly sold the crypto for a profit of more than 1.6 million yuan, which he used to repay his personal debts.
In May 2024, Chen decided to go to the public security bureau to surrender and truthfully confessed his crimes.
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