A man in Xiamen, China, was prosecuted for stealing virtual currency from others

On January 3, according to a report from the Xiamen Evening News, a man stole someone else's virtual currency and converted it into over 1.6 million yuan after losing money investing in futures on behalf of a friend. Recently, the Huli District Procuratorate of Xiamen, China, initiated a prosecution for this theft case. In September 2021, the defendant Chen was introduced to the victim Hong by a friend. At the time, Hong was deeply interested in virtual currency investment, and Chen had some experience in this area, so Hong entrusted Chen to help operate the virtual currency investment and provided his own account and login password. In June 2022, Chen suffered losses while investing in futures on behalf of a friend, and accumulated debts. Chen then developed the idea of stealing the virtual currency from Hong's account. At the end of September 2022, Chen fabricated a story about the account being offline, using this to deceive Hong and obtain various verification codes, and then successfully changed the login password of the account and bound the account to his own email. Afterwards, Chen repeatedly deceived Hong into providing real-time verification codes by claiming the account was offline, and continuously transferred the virtual currency in Hong's account to his own account. He then quickly sold these virtual currencies and earned over 1.6 million yuan, all of which he used to repay his personal debts. In May 2024, Chen voluntarily surrendered to the public security bureau and truthfully confessed his crimes. The Huli District Procuratorate prosecuted Chen for the crime of theft. According to Article 264 of the Criminal Law, if the amount stolen is particularly huge or there are other particularly serious circumstances, the punishment is imprisonment of more than 10 years or life imprisonment, and a fine or confiscation of property.