China: Victims of the Cybertheft Could be Sentenced to Life Imprisonment

In China, the hackers were arrested who had stolen $87 million in the cryptocurrency from the residents’ digital wallets. If their guilt is proven, this theft will become the largest in the Earth’s history. And it could stay unnoticed, by the way...

And it all began when a resident of Xi’an contacted the law enforcement authorities in March this year. He claimed that his digital wallet had been hacked and the cryptocurrency for 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) had been stolen. During the investigation, it became clear that those thefts happened regularly, and the amounts of money were comparable with the one, which the brave resident had claimed about. With the help of IT-specialists, it was possible to find the hackers. It turned out that they had already gathered digital coins for 600 million yuan ($87 million) on their accounts.

The cybercriminals used a remote method of hacking and had been earning their living this way for several years. But the victims did not hurry to file a complaint with police, because the crypto circulation is banned in China. And they have to explain now where they got such amount of money in digital assets.

And the criminals find themselves in the hot seat. Till 2011, one must have been sentenced to death for such a law violation, but now such components of crime amount to a life sentence, under Article 265 of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of PRC. And probably, this punishment is not only for the thieves – in recent time the practice is the following: the cryptocurrency is being used in China as one of the main means of illegal enrichment.  And if large transactions in fiat (including cash) money are strictly monitored in the Middle Kingdom, then the cryptocurrency provides a certain freedom of the anonymous management. Quite possibly that among the victims there are the miners, for example, whose activity was announced illegal; or the corrupt officials who are more and more willing to take bribes in the crypto in recent time. The punishment for such actions can be comparable to the sentence for thefts.

By the way, until this time the disappearance of the jewelry from the Graff Jewelers Shop in New Bond Street in London was considered the largest theft.  Two robbers under the guise of visitors entered the jewelry salon and at gunpoint forced to give them all the stuff from the shelves. The total of the stolen stuff was $65 million. And none of the stolen things was found in the future.