In recent years, the voices against "distant-sea fishing" and "profit-seeking law enforcement" have been growing louder. But the three-foot-thick ice is not formed in a day. From a practical level, there are many reasons for this phenomenon. For example, due to financial pressure in some regions, case handlers need to "find rice to cook" and look for cases that can create economic benefits and "enforce the law for profit". Another important reason is that my country's criminal jurisdiction regulations are too broad, and the jurisdiction regulations of "anything that touches it can be managed" have provided "distant-sea fishing" with a legal basis to support it.

As a lawyer, I have represented hundreds of cases, big and small, over the years. But I always believe that for the parties and their families, no criminal case is too small.

In a criminal case, does the prosecutor have to prosecute the person who has been arrested in court? But in fact, this question from a deeper perspective is actually another question: Is the combination of arrest and prosecution really reasonable? How many wrongful cases have been caused by the combination of arrest and prosecution?

Compared with traditional industries, Web3-related jobs have higher salary levels; project parties are generally overseas, so the domestic employees recruited are generally distributed offices and do not need to punch in and out. For workers, this is a high salary and freedom, which is simply the best life. However, after entering the Web3 circle, many people will learn that there are relevant regulations such as the 94 Announcement and the 924 Notice in China, which will raise a big question mark in their hearts as to whether their work content is legal in China. Therefore, many Web3 practitioners will seem to be "very stealthy". While they are surfing Web3 at high speed on the Internet, they are very secretive about their profession in public offline occasions.

"This project was indeed organized and planned by me. I want to know how you found the manipulator behind it? As far as I understand, it is impossible for you to find me. What did you rely on?" The above are the case details disclosed by the Shen County Public Security Bureau in handling the "12.04" virtual currency pyramid scheme case. During the interrogation, the criminal suspect and pyramid scheme leader Zhang asked the police officer this question in great confusion.

On February 9, 2025, the People's Court Daily published a case: "Overseas virtual currency investment is not protected by Chinese law". This case is one of the typical cases of foreign-related commercial trials released by the Jiangsu Provincial Higher People's Court. However, in sharp contrast to this legal warning are the myths of getting rich quickly that are not uncommon in the currency circle. A few days ago, Lawyer Shao just heard from a friend that his friend had 100,000 U on Binance and entrusted others to operate the contract, earning the equivalent of 30 million yuan in a month. Although this kind of thing doesn't sound uncommon in the currency circle, I still can't help but sigh that this person's luck is really enviable, tut tut. The investment threshold of the currency circle is high. For ordinary people, entrusting financial management and investment on behalf of others is almost a common way to participate in investment. As the saying goes: "Professional matters are left to professionals." So, what does this guiding case issued by the court mean to friends who speculate in coins?

What should I do if I don’t have enough foreign exchange for studying abroad? Is it safe to exchange US dollars with a private person? In order to circumvent the US$50,000 foreign exchange limit per person per year, many people will seek private foreign exchange, looking for foreign exchange scalpers, underground banks, or foreign exchange companies to achieve the purpose of foreign exchange. So, are there any legal risks in private foreign exchange? Is it illegal to help friends exchange foreign exchange? If so, where is the boundary of potential legal risks?

In recent years, with the rapid development of digital payments, virtual credit cards have become an important tool that cannot be ignored in cross-border payment scenarios such as online shopping and service subscriptions. Virtual credit card platforms that provide such services are generally registered overseas and have obtained relevant qualifications (such as MSB licenses, electronic currency licenses, cryptocurrency-related licenses, etc.), but the platform's technical team, operation and promotion, customer service personnel, etc. are located in mainland China. Although some virtual credit card platforms have been investigated by judicial authorities for illegal business operations, in the absence of explicit legal provisions, whether such commercial behavior can be characterized as illegal business operations still needs to be analyzed in combination with the platform's specific business scenarios and cannot be generalized.

On December 5, 2024, the People's Court Daily published an article entitled "Criminal Characterization of Illegal Theft of Virtual Currency". The case described in the article is not particularly complicated. It is about A stealing B's virtual currency USDT and selling it for profit. However, the court staff's analysis of the case in the article makes people feel chilling, revealing a sense of "Although I don't understand blockchain and virtual currency, I think you should be sentenced heavily!", which makes people feel a little uncomfortable. Let's discuss two viewpoints in the article.

CCTV News recently reported[1] a case in which a woman fell in love online with a man who claimed to work for a confidential unit. As a result, she was deceived into investing in virtual currency. The person involved has been arrested.

In the eyes of many people, programmers (code farmers, engineers) are high-paying jobs with lucrative incomes, which are enviable, but in the eyes of criminal lawyers, this is also a high-risk industry that is extremely prone to legal risks. Lawyer Shao has previously represented many cases in which programmers were suspected of criminal offenses: The company's business operations were suspected of copyright infringement, and the programmer was implicated as an employee; The software company provided illegal website construction services to customers, and the company's legal person was suspected of aiding and abetting; The overseas virtual currency exchange was suspected of opening a casino, and the programmer was arrested as a domestic employee; ... The Changping District People's Court of Beijing recently issued a case in which an employee used his position to obtain virtual currency for profit, constituting the crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data, and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. This article takes this case as an example to analyze relevant legal issues.

In recent years, we can see that many legal experts, scholars, lawyers, and judicial system case handlers have discussed how to legally and compliantly handle virtual currencies. Lawyer Shao has also shared relevant views (➡️ "Without a court ruling, the public security should not handle the virtual currency involved in the case!"). Regardless of what kind of disposal process the public security organs adopt to be compliant, in practice, there is a sufficient and necessary prerequisite for the case-handling unit to deal with virtual currency: the parties (suspects/defendants in criminal cases) need to take the initiative to return the stolen money and voluntarily turn it in. The issue that this article wants to discuss is that the virtual assets involved in the case have been frozen by the public security judiciary. If the parties refuse to cooperate with the case handlers to transfer their virtual currency from the exchange or digital wallet to the wallet address controlled by the case handlers, even if there is an effective court judgment in the future, can the virtual currency involved in the case be enforced?

In recent years, with the rapid development of blockchain technology, more and more entrepreneurs have turned to the Web3 field, trying to find opportunities in this blue ocean. However, for domestic Web3 entrepreneurs, in order to open up a sustainable development path in the gap between policies and market environment, they need to solve not only the problems related to the business content itself, but also the complex legal compliance challenges. This article summarizes the more frequent legal issues that Lawyer Shao will be asked in daily work, hoping to provide some ideas or inspiration for Web3 entrepreneurs.

On November 20, 2024, the official announced a piece of news. Yao Qian, former director of the Science and Technology Supervision Department and former director of the Information Center of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, was expelled from the party and removed from public office. The notice pointed out that Yao Qian spared no effort to support specific technology service providers for his own selfishness, and was willing to be the "key training target" of the hunters, using virtual currency to trade power for money. In recent years, virtual currency has attracted much attention due to its anonymity and decentralization, but it has also become a new tool for certain illegal and criminal acts, including bribery. Today, let's talk about the legal issues related to bribery using virtual currency.