In the past two days, the dispute between "Yescoin founder" Zhang and Wang has attracted a lot of attention. From a commercial dispute to a criminal case, some people lamented that this was the work of "mysterious forces", and some people believed that it was the result that Zhang, who had become a criminal suspect, deserved. As a web3 criminal lawyer, without being entrusted by the client, Lawyer Liu could not see the current case files of Zhang's suspected crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data. He could only talk about the compliance issues that web3 entrepreneurs should pay attention to based on his understanding of web3 entrepreneurs and the criminal cases he has personally handled.
I. Case Background
According to the information currently disclosed by platforms such as "Wu Shuo" and Odaily news, we can roughly understand that due to a business dispute between partners Wang and Zhang (Zhang Chi in the aforementioned screenshot announcement), the Yescoin platform that makes Ton ecological mini-games was arrested by the police in Hangzhou on February 12, 2025 on suspicion of " illegally obtaining computer information system data ." Of course, Wang's side did not recognize Zhang's status as a partner.
On February 13, Zhang was taken to Shanghai by the police. The article published by odaily said that "he was sent to Shanghai for trial on February 13". This statement is slightly flawed. In criminal cases, it is impossible for people to be tried immediately after being arrested. Instead, they must at least go through investigation by the public security organs and prosecution by the procuratorate before being tried by the court. Generally, criminal cases take at least six months to enter the court trial stage. Moreover, according to Lawyer Liu's experience, it should be the Shanghai police who went to Hangzhou to carry out the arrest, but the local police in Hangzhou will cooperate according to the law. In the end, the suspect was taken back to Shanghai by the Shanghai police. If Zhang could not be released on bail, he should now be detained in a detention center in a district of Shanghai.
According to Wu's "Exclusive Interview with Both Teams of Yescoin: Unclear Equity Leads to Disastrous Consequences and Fierce Fight for Control" and Odaily's "In-depth Investigation into the Arrest of "Yescoin Founder": Internal Struggles for Power, Hard Forks and Idealism", Zhang's team always believed that their position or role was at the partner level, but Wang believed that Zhang was not a project partner, but was just using the community resources he controlled to constantly ask for excessive prices. After unsuccessful negotiations between the two parties, the Hangzhou team led by Zhang removed the data account permissions of the software owner Lao Wang in November 2024, which may have led to the case.
2. What is the crime of “illegally obtaining computer information system data”?
According to information from Odaily, Zhang is currently suspected of the crime of " illegally obtaining computer information system data ."
This crime is stipulated in the second paragraph of Article 285 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of my country, which mainly regulates "violation of state regulations, intrusion into computer information systems other than those stipulated in the preceding paragraph (that is, intrusion into the fields of national affairs, national defense construction, and cutting-edge science and technology) or use other technical means to obtain data stored, processed or transmitted in the computer information system, or exercise illegal control over the computer information system", and serious acts.
There are two levels of this crime: if the circumstances are serious, the offender may be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention, and may be fined or fined alone; if the circumstances are particularly serious, the offender may be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than seven years, and may be fined.
What are the standards for these two levels? According to the current judicial interpretation, the standards for "serious circumstances" are:
(1) Obtaining more than ten sets of identity authentication information for online financial services such as payment settlement, securities trading, and futures trading;
(2) Obtaining more than 500 sets of identity authentication information other than that listed in item (1);
(3) Illegal gains of RMB 5,000 or more or economic losses of RMB 10,000 or more;
(IV) Other serious circumstances
The standard for "particularly serious circumstances" is: actions or consequences that are five times more than the above standard.
It is still unknown which specific regulation Zhang violated for which the case was filed, but based on my practical experience, item (3) is more likely.
3. Some suggestions for compliance in web3 startups
Putting aside the dispute between Zhang and Wang on the Yescoin platform, we have seen too many criminal cases of partnership disputes where "brothers become enemies" in practice. The main reason is very consistent with the Yescoin platform, that is, there is no prior equity arrangement between partners, shareholders, core employees and even ordinary employees. It may be okay in the early stage of entrepreneurship, when everyone can build a business together with brotherhood, but once there is profit, especially considerable profit, people will inevitably start to waver and want to share more.
In fact, we see that the most common cases of shareholders "treating each other with criminal penalties" are "embezzlement" and "tax-related crimes", which are definitely the most commonly used weapons in business wars. Although relevant departments have always emphasized that criminal means should not be used to intervene in civil and commercial disputes, the reality is that it is so realistic. Nowadays, the number of web3 companies is increasing, and some computer crimes have begun to appear in shareholder disputes, which can be regarded as a new discovery of web3 criminal risks.
Therefore, young web3 entrepreneurs must pay attention to pre-compliance. None of the necessary legal documents should be missed, and they cannot just download them from Baidu or Google. It is best to have them drafted or reviewed by professional lawyers, and try to eliminate commercial and criminal legal risks before and during the business.
As web3 lawyers, we strongly recommend that all entrepreneurs have their own consultant lawyers, especially web3 lawyers who understand criminal defense. This is not only because lawyers want to "sell themselves" and get legal fees, but also because we have witnessed too many legal risks in reality. Even many criminal legal risks can be completely avoided in the early stages of occurrence, and even a win-win situation can be achieved. However, due to the lack of participation and intervention of reliable lawyers, all parties ultimately allow the situation to deteriorate into a lose-lose situation, which is regrettable.
