TechFlow news, on September 14, according to the official WeChat account of the Beijing Higher People's Court, the Changping District Court in Beijing recently concluded a case involving the illegal acquisition of computer information system data. The defendant, Zhang Mou, formerly a blockchain engineer at an internet company, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and fined 60,000 yuan for illegally obtaining Ethereum from his employer.
The case revealed that in July 2020, while participating in a company project development, Zhang requested source code and private keys beyond his authorized access level from a colleague under the pretext of "code learning." Subsequently, Zhang shared this information in a "technical discussion group" and invited members of the group to attack the company’s account, successfully stealing 106.15 ETH. Zhang then laundered the stolen cryptocurrency by converting it into other digital currencies and transferring funds across multiple accounts, ultimately profiting 38,329.76 RMB illegally.
The court ruled that virtual currency constitutes data within a computer information system. Zhang’s actions constituted the crime of illegally acquiring data from a computer information system, with particularly serious circumstances. The court rejected Zhang’s argument that the company should bear inherent risks associated with its project, emphasizing that the risks involved in cryptocurrency transactions and the nature of the project do not affect the legal assessment of criminal conduct.
