The Supreme Court released a typical case of punishing online pyramid schemes in accordance with the law, involving virtual currency investment scams

The Supreme People's Court and the State Administration for Market Regulation jointly released 5 typical cases of punishing online pyramid schemes in accordance with the law, including a case of promising high returns under the guise of investing in "virtual currency". The basic facts of the case are as follows: In early 2018, the defendant Chen and others used blockchain as a gimmick to plan to set up a "some Token" network platform to carry out pyramid schemes, requiring participants to obtain a member account of the platform through recommendations from their online friends, and pay a threshold fee of more than US$500 in virtual currency to obtain value-added services. They can use the platform's "smart dog brick-moving" technology to conduct arbitrage transactions in different trading venues and obtain platform income. In order to evade the crackdown, Chen and others moved the platform's customer service group and coin transfer group abroad in January 2019, and continued to carry out pyramid schemes on the "some Token" network platform. According to statistics, the "some Token" network platform has more than 2.6 million registered member accounts, with 3,293 levels, and has collected more than 9 million virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Tether, and EOS from members. The People's Court of the Economic and Technological Development Zone of Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province sentenced Chen to 11 years in prison and a fine of RMB 6 million for organizing and leading pyramid selling activities; the remaining defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from eight years and eight months to two years and fined; the illegal gains were recovered, confiscated, and turned over to the state treasury. After the first instance verdict, Chen and others appealed. The Intermediate People's Court of Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province ruled to dismiss the appeal and uphold the original verdict. The People's Court imposed corresponding penalties based on the status and role of the organizers and leaders of cross-border network pyramid selling activities in the entire criminal chain. At the same time, the Bitcoin and other virtual currencies involved in the case were confiscated in accordance with the law, cutting off the defendant's economic ability to commit cross-border crimes again, demonstrating the attitude of the judicial organs to resolutely defend the security of Internet finance and maintain the stable and healthy development of the financial market order.