Beijing High Court: Zhang was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for "obtaining" 106.15 ETH by taking advantage of his position

ChainCatcher news, according to the official account of the Beijing High People's Court, a blockchain engineer named Zhang from a certain internet company, during his participation in the development of a project, learned that there was a large amount of Ethereum in the project account. He developed malicious intentions and wanted to attack the company account to obtain Ethereum. Taking advantage of his work, he requested program codes and private keys from colleagues that exceeded his work authority under the pretext of "code learning."

According to Zhang, he had joined a certain "technical exchange group," where members could obtain virtual currency for arbitrage by cracking codes. He shared the code and private keys in that group, inviting a group member named Jack to crack the code and attack the company account, obtaining 106.15 Ethereum. Zhang stated that he planned to "wash" the obtained Ethereum, intending to distribute it after its value increased later. He converted Ethereum into other forms of currency and transferred it through multiple accounts, including his wife's, before transferring it back to his own account. After the company discovered that the virtual currency in the account had been stolen, it quickly reported the case. After the prosecution was initiated by the procuratorate, the Changping Court formed a collegial panel and publicly heard the case.

After hearing the case, the Changping Court found that based on the evidence on file, such as the circulation of the involved Ethereum, the extracted Ethereum code address and corresponding private key information from Zhang's computer, and the chat between Zhang and his wife containing "washing coins" and related witness testimonies, it was sufficient to determine that the defendant Zhang violated regulations by soliciting program codes and private keys from others, illegally obtaining Ethereum information from the company's computer system, and profiting from transactions involving part of the Ethereum. Ultimately, the court legally sentenced the defendant Zhang to three years and six months in prison for the crime of illegally obtaining data from a computer information system, and imposed a fine of 60,000 yuan. At the same time, the court ordered the confiscation of the defendant Zhang's illegal gains of 38,329.76 yuan. After the first-instance judgment, the defendant Zhang appealed. The second-instance ruling dismissed the appeal and upheld the original judgment. The case has now taken effect.