In Beijing, prosecutors have jailed eight individuals for working a 12 months‑lengthy Bitcoin rip-off that drained over 140 million yuan—round $20 million—from a brief‐video platform after which funneled the money into crypto.
In keeping with a White Paper launched by the Individuals’s Procuratorate of Haidian District, the case ranks among the many most advanced anti‑corruption circumstances dealt with between 2020 and 2024. What started as easy bonus approvals inside the corporate become a 12 months‑lengthy scheme that hid stolen funds behind shell corporations and digital currencies.
Insider Energy Opened Loopholes
Based mostly on studies, an worker named Feng held sole management over service‑supplier onboarding, bonus {qualifications} and payout approvals.
He quietly tweaked bonus insurance policies to create gaps that solely he and two outdoors helpers, Tang and Yang, might exploit. Pretend paperwork flowed in with personal knowledge that Feng leaked.
Then the trio rerouted bonus funds into made‑up accounts, as an alternative of rewarding actual work. By the point auditors noticed the lacking money, practically 140 million yuan had already vanished.
Pretend Corporations And Laundering Chain
The gang used shell firms with no actual operations. Yang directed affiliate Wang and others to arrange round 10 of those paper companies.
All they did was acquire the bogus bonus payouts. From there, funds jumped throughout a number of financial institution accounts till they landed in Yang’s arms. Feng then ordered the following step: changing it into Bitcoin.
They break up the loot on eight totally different worldwide platforms and combined the cash, scrambling the transaction path to cover the cash’s origin.
Authorities Hint Bitcoin Move
Prosecutor Li Tao, of Haidian’s Science and Expertise Crime division, constructed an in depth map of the rip-off. By evaluating firm knowledge logs, financial institution data and blockchain transfers, his group peeled again every layer of concealment.
They even recovered over 90 Bitcoin throughout the investigation—sufficient to show precisely how the “closed‑loop” laundering chain labored. Every recovered coin tied again to the stolen rewards, confirming each twist of the cash’s path.
Sentencing took into consideration every individual’s function. Feng obtained the longest time period—14 years and 6 months behind bars—whereas the opposite seven had been handed jail sentences starting from three to 14 years, plus hefty fines.
All had been discovered responsible of occupational embezzlement. This case serves as a warning: when one individual holds an excessive amount of energy, even routine bonus programs can grow to be automobiles for large fraud—and trendy crypto instruments can’t assure anonymity perpetually.
Featured picture from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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