An Engineer Received a 3.5-Year Sentence for Using His Position to Profit from Cryptocurrency

BlockBeats News, November 21st, Recently, the People's Court of Changping District, Beijing, 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.

Zhang, who worked as a blockchain engineer at a certain network company. In July 2020, during his participation in the company's development of a project, he learned that there was a large amount of Ethereum in the project account and decided to attack the company's account to obtain the Ethereum. Therefore, Zhang took advantage of his position, claiming "code learning," to request from colleagues program code and private keys beyond his job scope.

According to Zhang, he had joined a certain "technical exchange group" and shared the code and private keys with the group, inviting members to crack the code and attack the company's account to obtain 106.15 Ethereum. Zhang conducted "coin mixing" with the obtained Ethereum, converted the Ethereum into other forms of currency, transferred it through multiple accounts, and then back to his own account. After calculation, Zhang illegally gained a total of RMB 38,329.76.

Ultimately, the court legally sentenced the defendant Zhang for the crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data, sentencing him to 3 years and 6 months in prison, a fine of 60,000 yuan, and the recovery of illegally obtained gains of 38,329.76 yuan. The second instance ruling rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment.