jakiro
In 2015, my country’s Criminal Law added the crime of assisting information cybercrime activities (hereinafter referred to as “the crime of helping trust”).As the “card-broken” operation continues to deepen, the number of prosecutions on this crime has grown rapidly. Public data shows that the crime of gangsters has ranked third in criminal cases.In practice, people have mixed love and hate for this crime. On the one hand, it is less liable than accomplices and is highly “favored”; on the other hand, it is difficult to easily get rid of legal consequences as a guarantee clause.In practice, courts in different regions also have large differences in discretionary standards for crimes against gangs, which leads to the common phenomenon of “different judgments in the same case”.On July 28, 2025, the “Two High Schools and One Department” jointly issued the “Opinions on Handling Criminal Activities in Criminal Activities and Other Criminal Activities” (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”). This “Opinions” can be described as a super reinforcement board manual on the judicial practice of helping crimes, and is also called “new regulations on helping crimes.”
1. What are the changes in the new rules for the crime of helping believers?
The “Opinions” made major adjustments to the identification standards and sentencing rules for the crime of helping the crime, which are mainly reflected in the following aspects
2. What is the judicial guiding significance of seven typical cases?
When the “Opinions” was released, 7 typical cases were simultaneously released, covering key roles of black and gray industries such as “U merchants”, “authors” and “professional unblocking persons”.Especially Case 4 focuses on the field of virtual currency crime. Through studying opinions and published typical cases, the author found that there is no big difference from the criminal cases we handle every day, but the measures and efforts are stricter in combating cybercrime and black and gray industries.
[Basic Case] In mid-July 2022, in order to obtain illegal benefits, the defendants Wang, Zhang and Zhao jointly planned to transfer criminal funds to others through transfers, withdrawals and purchases of virtual currencies.The three people have a clear division of labor. Wang provides funds. Through Zhao’s purchase of virtual currency, he handed it over to the online banking as a deposit. Wang and Zhang then acquire a large number of bank cards from others and provide them to the online banking for receiving criminal funds.When the criminal funds are deposited into the bank card provided by Wang and others, they will notify Wang and others online. Wang and others will arrange for others to withdraw cash from multiple banks in Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province. After withdrawing a commission of 10%-15% of the funds, the remaining funds will be transferred to the online.After investigation, from August 5 to 14, 2022, Wang and others had more than 400,000 yuan in the transfer funds to the online transfer.
[Result of Judgment] After trial in accordance with the law, the People’s Court of Acheng District of Harbin sentenced Wang and Zhang to three years and six months in prison and a fine of RMB 30,000 for concealing and concealing the proceeds of the crime; Zhao was sentenced to three years and three months in prison and a fine of RMB 25,000.After the verdict was announced, Wang, Zhang and Zhao appealed, and the original verdict was upheld in the second instance.
【Warning】Wang, Zhang and Zhao received the stolen money through bank cards and exchanged it into virtual currency to transfer the funds involved in the case. This is a typical “Card U back”The example of transferring stolen money is also an example of the “financial closed-loop” operation that many criminals consider themselves to be “perfect”.In practice, many upstream fraud criminals hide abroad, cleverly transferring stolen money with the help of virtual currency anonymity, high concealment and transaction convenience to increase the difficulty of investigating the case-handling agency. Downstream criminals assist the upstream in completing the cleaning and transfer of funds through a series of complex operations, and continue to “supply blood and food” to the upstream, which ultimately leads to irreparable losses from victims.The guiding significance of this case not only reflects the rules for the application of opinions, but also provides clear behavioral guidance and judgment standards for such cases. Even if you do not directly participate in upstream fraud, the “middlemen” who provide channels for the circulation of stolen money should be severely punished.
3. After the new regulations are introduced, what should web3 practitioners pay attention to?
The spring of web3 can only be “legal blowing”
1. The new regulations send clear signals, and ignorance is no longer a omnipotent shield.For web3 industry practitioners, they should strengthen their learning and understanding of relevant laws and regulations, be vigilant, strengthen risk prevention and control measures, establish sound compliance strategies to ensure the legality and compliance of business activities, and avoid becoming a “tool” or “accomplice” for criminals without knowing it.
2. Under the policy of combining leniency and severity, students or those who are coerced will be lighter, while technical tycoons will be heavy.After the opinions are issued, the construction and maintenance personnel of virtual currency trading platforms, technical developers of coin mixers and anonymous wallets need to be wary of risks. Even if they do not directly participate in fraud or pyramid schemes, they may be considered as “providing technical support specifically for illegal and criminal activities” directly constitutes the crime of helping, because your development work has essentially lowered the threshold for crimes, so it is no longer “technical neutrality” but “technical assistance”.
3.OTC merchants are undoubtedly “licking blood at the tip of a knife”, and the criminal risk has increased significantly.If an OTC merchant continues to trade after the account is frozen during the transaction, it is likely to be deemed to be “continued to carry out the act after being restricted”, which directly constitutes the crime of helping the credit. If a USDT crossover service is provided to the underground bank, multiple crimes may be punished together.
4.Web3 Entrepreneurs’ compliance is imperative.web3 Entrepreneurs should build an industry compliance system as soon as possible externally, strengthen internal training internally, and organize legal training for all employees regularly.
4. How do lawyers view the key influence and challenges of the “Opinions”?
For organized and professional help behaviors that are clearly listed as severe punishment in the “Opinions”, after the issuance of the “Opinions”, on the one hand, it increases the crime cost of upstream criminals, and on the other hand, it can effectively punish illegal groups such as professional card issuers and professional cardholders.Although the “Opinions” refines the standards for conviction and sentencing, providing lawyers with clearer and more specific legal basis and rule guidelines for handling criminal cases such as helping and credential crimes, the determination of “knowingly” may still have a vague space due to the complexity of the case. We need to deeply explore factors such as the subjective understanding of the perpetrator, the motivation for behavior, and whether it is really driven by interests.In short, the release of the “Opinions on Handling Issues Related to Handling Criminal Cases of Information Cyber Crime Activities” marks the “penetrating” crackdown on the virtual currency industry by judicial authorities.Practitioners need to deeply realize that only by building a full-process compliance system covering “pre-review ->in-process monitoring ->after-traceability” can they conduct business within the compliance framework.
Lawyer Meimei advises that virtual currency industry practitioners should help others and help them not “help letters”. If the case is filed, contact the lawyer immediately to avoid knowing presumptions caused by wrong confessions.
