Opening a casino, as the name suggests, is the act of creating and operating a gambling venue; you can open a "physical store", and now more "opening an online store". According to the provisions of the judicial interpretation, establishing a gambling website, acting as an agent for a gambling website and accepting bets, all constitute this crime.
The crime of opening a casino has two sentencing levels: less than five years and more than five years. If the amount of profiteering by profiteering in the opened casino reaches 30,000 yuan, the gambling funds reach 300,000 yuan, the number of gamblers reaches more than 120, etc., it will be a circumstance of more than five years of fixed-term imprisonment.
This crime is a new crime added to the 2021 Criminal Law Amendment (XI). Like the crime of opening a casino, there are two sentencing levels; however, there is currently no judicial interpretation specifically for this crime. In 2020, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and the Ministry of Public Security did have a regulation: The "Opinions on Several Issues in Handling Cross-border Gambling Crime Cases" identified cross-border gambling crimes. Interested friends can learn about it for themselves.
The above three crimes are referred to as "gambling crimes" in short.
Since the rise of the Internet, gambling activities have mainly moved online. Online gambling has completely gotten rid of the traditional method's requirements or dependence on the region. "Gamblers" no longer have to worry about the police raiding the smoky dark room, or trying hard to show their Oscar acting skills in the chess and card room, or hiking to the primeval forest to draw cards.
In addition to having no geographical restrictions, online gambling is also fully free in terms of time, and it is more convenient to deposit and withdraw money. Gamblers are happy, and the dealers are even happier: Online casinos can be controlled at any time, not only in terms of winning or losing results and probabilities, but also in terms of some platforms directly restricting gamblers from withdrawing cash or money with reasons such as "hacker attacks", "system failures" and "abnormal funds", directly sublimating their suspected crimes of opening casinos into fraud. Gamblers are always the ones who get hurt here - they lose every time they gamble.
In view of the prevalence of online gambling, in 2010, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Justice jointly issued the "Opinions on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Laws in Handling Online Gambling Crimes" (hereinafter referred to as the "2010 Opinions"), which stipulates the standards for conviction and sentencing of online gambling.
2. Identification of gamblers
Whether it is the crime of gambling or the crime of opening a casino, or the crime of organizing and participating in a foreign casino, the purpose of the state's crackdown on these behaviors is to maintain a stable social order, because in addition to the harmfulness of gambling behavior itself, it is also very easy to breed "secondary crimes", such as gamblers stealing, robbing or even killing for gambling money.
However, lawyers believe that the identification standards for gambling crimes (such as the 2005 "Explanation on Several Issues Concerning the Specific Application of Laws in Handling Criminal Cases of Gambling" and the 2010 "Opinions on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Laws in Handling Criminal Cases of Internet Gambling") are seriously lagging behind the current social development. It is very inappropriate to use the crime amount stipulated 15 or even 20 years ago to identify the current gambling crime - God knows how many times the inflation has reached. The judicial organs should comprehensively determine the punishment that the suspect/defendant should receive according to the actual situation of the current social development, rather than just the amount involved.
In virtual currency gambling cases, not only is there the problem that the above-mentioned applicable judicial interpretations lag far behind the development of today's society, but also because of the special nature of virtual currency itself, the evidence collection standards and evidence proof standards of the case-handling agencies are more or less inconsistent with the current Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law, and relevant judicial interpretations, and there are even serious conflicts, which are mainly reflected in the identification of gambling funds and gamblers involved in the case. This should also attract the attention of the case-handling agencies. They must keep up with the times and learn professional knowledge of blockchain and virtual currency in order to handle virtual currency-related online gambling cases well, rather than blindly maintaining their strong position and turning a deaf ear to the reasonable opinions of the defense lawyers.
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