Taking stock of the top five criminal offenses in 2023, which ones are related to the cryptocurrency world?

Written by: Liu Zhengyao, Shanghai Mankiw LLP

I. Introduction

Recently, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the "White Paper on Criminal Procuratorial Work (2023)", which summarized the national criminal procuratorial work in 2023. It mentioned that in 2023, the national procuratorates accepted a total of 1,209,052 criminal suspects of various types for review and arrest, and approved the arrest of 726,000 people after review; accepted and reviewed the prosecution of 2,511,263 criminal suspects of various types, and decided to prosecute 1,688,000 people after review; both are rising trends compared with previous years.

According to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate:

审查逮捕案件中盗窃罪，诈骗罪，帮助信息网络犯罪活动罪（以下简称「帮信罪」），掩饰、隐瞒犯罪所得、犯罪所得收益罪（以下简称「掩隐罪」），开设赌场罪合计占 48.4%；

Among the cases reviewed for prosecution, crimes of dangerous driving, theft, aiding and abetting, concealment and fraud accounted for 53.7% in total.

That is to say, in some cases of dangerous driving, the public security organs directly take weak compulsory measures such as bail pending trial; while in the case of fraud, the vast majority of suspects are transferred to the procuratorate for review and arrest. In terms of quantity, the dangerous driving crime has a clear lead and is "far ahead" in the first place.

We will conduct a big data analysis based on the first five crimes prosecuted by the procuratorate: dangerous driving, theft, aiding and abetting, concealing, and fraud, as well as the fifth crime under arrest review (which is also a common crime in the cryptocurrency world): opening a casino.

(Photo source: Supreme People's Procuratorate official account)

II. Crime Analysis

1. Dangerous driving

Through the search tool alpha, we found that the characteristics of driving crimes are as follows:

(The visual image is from the alphalawyer platform, the same below)

In 2023, the courts made 43,439 judgments on the crime of dangerous driving and posted them publicly online. Compared with normal data, this is definitely less. The reason behind this is that the rate of online publication of criminal case judgments is currently low.

From the perspective of geographical distribution, Henan, Guangdong, Inner Mongolia and other places have a large number of cases. The most common factor in the crime of dangerous driving is drunk driving. From this we can also see that although the country has not relaxed its governance and crackdown on drunk driving for more than a decade, and even "don't drink and drive, don't drink and drive" has become a catchphrase for frequent guests at the wine table, there are still a large number of people who test the law. This also requires us to re-understand the relevant concepts in criminology. Crime is a social phenomenon. It is impossible to say that this phenomenon can be eradicated by issuing a certain regulation. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the principle of "killing someone for his life" that even children know, but there are still many people who are willing to "sacrifice their lives" and violate the provisions of the criminal law.

2. Theft

In 2023, there were 14,256 court verdicts on theft crimes that were posted online. In reality, of course, the number is far higher (it would not be an exaggeration to multiply it by 10). From the publicly available data, the time distribution shows an upward trend month by month, and Shanghai, Guangdong, and Henan rank in the top three in terms of geographical distribution.

Through searching, Lawyer Liu found that 4 of the theft cases were related to Bitcoin. However, upon closer inspection, it was not because the parties stole Bitcoin that the cases were committed. Interestingly, there was one verdict in which the party was convicted of theft because he stole electricity for mining.

However, in reality, among the large number of inquiries our team receives every week, some are about the theft of their own virtual currency; through our services, some parties have successfully filed cases with the police. With the rise in the market value of Bitcoin, the number of cases of virtual currency theft will surely continue to increase in the future. Lawyer Liu also reminds everyone to choose a reliablewalletSave your own virtual currency.

(III) Crime of aiding and abetting

The crime of aiding and abetting has been widely used by judicial authorities since 2018, almost in sync with the "card-cutting operation", because the threshold for conviction is low (corresponding to the low difficulty of judicial authorities in proving the crime) and the maximum sentence is only 3 years. In a sense, it also "encourages" lawyers as defenders not to defend too hard - anyway, it is difficult to have a breakthrough defense result, such as not guilty or downgraded punishment. Of course, there are still many dedicated defenders in reality.

According to the data analysis, there were only 10,128 verdicts on the crime of aiding and abetting trusts that were published online by the courts in 2023. This is completely out of touch with reality. The main reason is the same as above, that is, the enthusiasm of the courts to actively publish judicial documents is no longer as high as before. From a regional perspective, the courts in Shanghai, Hunan and Henan published the most verdicts.

The relationship between the crime of aiding others and the cryptocurrency circle mainly involves OTC transactions on U, teams using virtual currency to run points, etc. This is also what Liu Lu has been calling for. For cryptocurrency newbies, don’t foolishly lend your bank card, phone card, ID card and other information to others for a little profit, or help others conduct virtual currency trading.wallet,exchangeAccount registration or transfer. Once it involves stolen money or dirty money, it will basically be identified as a gang.

4. Concealment of crimes

The crime of concealment can be understood as an "upgraded version" of the crime of aiding and abetting. First, its burden of proof is a little stricter than that of aiding and abetting. Second, its maximum penalty is also significantly higher than that of aiding and abetting. The crime of concealment is relatively stable among the more than 480 criminal charges, and has even shown a slight downward trend in the past two years (only more than 6,000 were announced by the court in 2023). However, in the context of the "Card Cutting Operation", its volume will not be too small. After all, it can still be the fourth in the number of charges prosecuted by the national procuratorate, and "its strength should not be underestimated."

The relationship between the crime of concealment and the cryptocurrency circle is actually not much different from the crime of aiding and abetting. The difference is that in addition to providing payment settlement and other assistance for other crimes, the crime of concealment also provides assistance such as transfer, facial recognition withdrawal, and on-site withdrawal.

(V) FraudXiaobai Navigation

Fraud is considered a felony in the field of property crimes. According to current standards, if the amount of fraud exceeds 500,000, the sentence will be at least 10 years in prison. Especially in the cryptocurrency world, projects worth millions of yuan seem to be everywhere. Once they are identified as fraud by judicial authorities, the consequences are naturally difficult to be optimistic.

According to the data, in 2023, there were 4,696 fraud cases published online by courts across the country, which is certainly far less than the actual cases. In terms of regions, Shanghai, Henan and Liaoning ranked in the top three.

(VI) Crime of opening a casino

Although the crime of opening a casino is not among the top five crimes that the procuratorate has referred to the court for prosecution, it is among the top five crimes that the public security agency has referred to the procuratorate for approval of arrest. The traditional offline small chess and card rooms and large New Lisboa are definitely old-time; even the online casinos in web2, even if there are many "beautiful dealers, online card dealing", are gradually being web3 , especially with the increasing consensus among the public on virtual currency, online gambling through virtual currency seems to be a new trend of the times. However, crime is crime, and once the parties are caught in judicial criminal prosecution, it is difficult to avoid legal risks in essence even if virtual currency is used, especially when it comes to casinos whose users are mainland Chinese or casinos that launder money for fraud funds whose victims are Chinese. They may be "punished even if they are far away."

According to the data retrieved by Lawyer Liu, in 2023, only 2,839 judgments on fraud crimes by courts across the country were made public online, and they were concentrated in Shanghai, Henan, Hubei and other places.

3. Conclusion

"I wish that there would be no disease in the world, so why not let the medicine on the shelf collect dust" is the wish of a good doctor, "There would be no thieves in the world" is the wish of a great director, and I believe that "There would be no crime in the world" is the sincere wish of legal workers including lawyers and judicial organs. Even Lawyer Liu can make up a sentence "I wish that there would be no crime in the world, so why not let the prison windows rust". However, judging from the data of the Supreme People's Procuratorate in 2023, this wish is difficult to achieve. On the contrary, the workload of the public security, procuratorial and judicial organs has only increased in recent years. As a criminal lawyer, Lawyer Liu hopes that every case can be handled fairly and impartially, and every party should be held accountable within the scope of the law even if they are guilty. This is also the meaning of the existence of lawyers, which can prevent judicial organs from making mistakes to a certain extent.

Another point I want to mention is that from the data retrieved by Lawyer Liu, several crimes are "topped" by Shanghai and Henan, and it just so happens that these two places are related to me - either now or in the past. This can only show that the judicial openness and transparency of these two places is better, but it cannot prove anything else.

The article comes from the Internet:Taking stock of the top five criminal offenses in 2023, which ones are related to the cryptocurrency world?

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