Chinese Wuhan $66,000 Cryptocurrency Theft Case Retrial: The stolen amount is determined based on the actual payment cost to the victim, and the main culprit is sentenced to ten years and six months

June 6 – According to the Chinese official outlet Procuratorial Daily, three individuals named Lin, Zeng, and Dai conspired to use cryptocurrency transactions as a cover for theft. Their scheme: they secretly recorded a victim’s digital wallet private key during a transaction, then logged into the victim’s wallet to reverse the transfer once the cryptocurrency was received, moving the funds back to accounts they controlled. The trio pulled off this scam three times, causing the victim to lose a total of 660,000 RMB. The first-instance court in Wuhan initially ruled against using the victim’s 660,000 RMB loss to label the case as involving an “especially large financial amount,” citing a lack of clear judicial interpretations for cryptocurrency valuation and sentencing standards. Instead, the court convicted the three under the legal category of “other serious circumstances,” sentencing them to prison terms ranging from five and a half to eight years, plus fines. The Han Yang District Procuratorate of Wuhan City, Hubei Province, subsequently filed an appeal, which was supported by Wuhan’s municipal procuratorate. Prosecutors claimed the lower court misapplied the law and imposed overly lenient sentences. Wuhan municipal prosecutor Dai Wentao stated that the initial court’s decision to ignore the victim’s clear loss amount was logically inconsistent and a misapplication of the law. He added that a mainstream approach in judicial practice is to determine theft amounts based on stolen property’s price or transaction value, so the victim’s actual cost to acquire the cryptocurrency has factual, legal, and practical merit for valuation. On appeal, the Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court accepted the prosecutors’ arguments, overturning the original judgment. The court reclassified the theft as involving an “especially large amount” of funds. Lin, the main offender, was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison; his accomplices Zeng and Dai each received eight-year prison terms and fines.