A Chinese court has convicted him of human trafficking using the digital yuan.
A court in China has ordered “gang” members to be jailed and fined using the yuan central bank's digital currency, local press reported.
The People's Procuratorate of Yucheng District, Zhejiang Province, has not given a trial date for three individuals in Shaoxing City who were sentenced to seven to 16 months in prison for money laundering.
The gang members were identified only by their family names. 200,000 Chinese yuan ($27,580) were taken digitally in Shaoxing in mid-September, according to Chinese business website Mpaypass. A fourth person was arrested, but their fate is not known.
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Unsuccessful in his attempts to find a job, Yuan arrives in Shaoxing and sees an ad in his hotel offering a 0.8% commission to people who can withdraw digital yuan with local merchants. After several solo operations, he enlists his girlfriend Zhang and their friend Kuo to help him.
CBCC privacy is used
The gang offered 1%-1.5% commission to merchants in Shaoxing, Jinhua, Hangzhou, Jiaxing and other places. The criminals used “foreign chat tools” to communicate with that boss. Zhang and Kuo received a 0.5% commission. The publication said:
“Digital RMB [yuan] Payment transactions are highly private, and offshore fraud groups take advantage of this feature.
“Not many stores” accept digital yuan, Mpaypass continued. Public security organizations received reports of an unusual flow of digital yuan among traders and quickly arrested the gang members.
The digital yuan offers “controlled anonymity” as necessary for crime prevention, according to current and former People's Bank of China officials. This phrase is also used in press reports.
Digital Yuan crime is rare but not unknown.
Reports of fraud using digital yuan are rare. In the year In May 2023, a website called Cnstock, which calls itself “China's leading market legal information disclosure platform,” reported a similar case in Shanghai in May 2023.
In the Shanghai indictment, eight people, including the traders, were charged and sentenced to between four and 54 months in prison and fines. A total of $1.379 million was illegally stolen, some of which was obtained through “telecommunications network fraud.”
The ability to use only phone numbers to open digital yuan accounts was critical to the implementation of that plan. The illegal activities came to light after the bank employees reported it.
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