Recently, the Yangzhou Jiangdu police spent four years and traced the origin of the extraordinarily large heated non-burning cigarette (hereinafter referred to as the new type of cigarette) case in many parts of the country. A criminal gang with supply, transshipment, warehousing, express delivery and network sales systems was "one pot end". In the case, 47 criminal suspects were held criminally responsible, the funds involved reached 320 million yuan, and more than 5,000 new types of cigarettes were seized, involving 34 provinces and municipalities across the country. On January 20, the Jiangdu Branch of the Yangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau announced the details of the case.
△ The police arrested the suspect
Two packs of cigarettes led to a major case on the Internet
"Comrade! I feel like I've bought fake cigarettes! On the morning of December 6, 2017, two consumers came to the Bridge Inspection Squadron of the Tobacco Bureau of Jiangdu District, Yangzhou City, saying that they had purchased two packs of new cigarettes online, the taste was a bit wrong, suspected that it was a fake cigarette, and asked professionals to identify.
The law enforcement personnel initially inspected and determined that the product was not a fake cigarette, but a "smoke bomb". In June 2017, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration successively issued the Notice on Implementing the Supervision of Heated Non-Combustible Cigarettes and the Guidelines for the Catalogue of New Cigarette Supervision, which clearly listed four brand new cigarette products as tobacco products and included them in the scope of tobacco product supervision, and the cigarettes provided by these two consumers were among them. These cigarettes are all from abroad, and they have been imported and sold through "purchasing on behalf of" and "human flesh backpacks", which has undermined the tobacco monopoly system on the mainland and caused a large amount of tax revenue loss, which is illegal business.
The tobacco department learned that the online shop selling new cigarettes was quite influential among the smokers and the sales volume was huge, so it handed over the clue to the Jiangdu police.
The Jiangdu Branch of the Yangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau followed this clue to "follow the vine to touch the melon", and found that the online store business activities were quite active, and in half a year, the sales of shipments to 4 consumers in the Jiangdu police jurisdiction alone reached more than 60,000 yuan, which has reached the standard for criminal filing.
△ New type of cigarette seized by the police
The police judged that there was a huge criminal gang behind the store, with a perfect supply, transfer, warehousing, express delivery and network sales system. On December 13, Jiangdu police and Jiangdu District Tobacco Bureau jointly established a "12.6 new cigarette" special case team to carry out investigation work.
In the following year or so, the special case team handled the case police to Go to Xinxin, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong, Guizhou and other places, and went to more than 20 cities, and after four concentrated arrests, successfully arrested 34 criminal suspects, all of whom were successfully prosecuted.
Perseverance to pull out the big guy behind the scenes
34 suspects were successfully prosecuted, and the case was solved. However, there is also a suspect in the case, Xiao Xian (pseudonym), who failed to conclude the investigation, and always let the police handling the case like a fish in the throat.
In 2018, the Ningbo police once handled a case of illegal online sales of heated non-burning cigarettes, involving a huge amount of money and a large number of people involved, which caused great repercussions throughout the country. In this case, a suspect named Da Gua (pseudonym) was imprisoned for illegally selling heated non-burning cigarettes for more than 200,000 yuan.
At the beginning of 2019, with the assistance of the inspection brigade of the Jiangdu District Tobacco Bureau, the Jiangdu police combed and checked a large amount of data and found that Xiaoxian had frequent contact with Dagua, and there were cigarette sales transactions, and the amount was huge. In order to find out the facts of the case, the police arrested Xiaoxian along the line, and after his return, he truthfully explained the channels, quantities and trading methods of purchasing cigarette bombs, and confirmed that the big melon was Xiaoxian's main supply line, and the value of the case involved reached more than 800,000 yuan. The police then found that Dagua was quite cunning and had a certain anti-reconnaissance ability, and in the case in Zhejiang, he avoided the heavy and light, and only confessed the facts of the case related to Zhejiang, the case value was only more than 200,000, and the sentence was relatively light.
Jiangdu police immediately joined hands with the Ningbo police to conduct in-depth research and judgment on Dagua, and found that there were more than 10 bank accounts, 7 mobile phone numbers, and multiple network payment accounts under his name, and the transaction methods were complex and changeable, with many lines and strings, and the flow of water involved in the case was nearly 10 million yuan.
According to these clues, the big melon and the sales network behind the big melon were accurately locked by the police.
Destroy the network and cut off the source to thoroughly investigate the criminal group
According to the evidence provided by the Jiangdu police, Dagua, who has been serving a sentence, has been successfully added to the sentence, and the sales network behind it is also clearly displayed in front of the police handling the case.
In recent years, Dagua has recruited more than 10 people, including courier point owners, truck drivers, and the "camel team" responsible for bringing goods out of the cooperation zone, forming a criminal gang with a clear division of labor that integrates supply, transshipment, warehousing, transportation, express delivery and network sales. After clarifying the identity information of the gang suspects, the police handling the case went south to Guangdong and Fujian, north to Xinjiang, surrounded and blocked, and arrested the gang members one by one.
On September 21, 2020, a direct flight from Osaka, Japan to Hangzhou Xiaoshan Airport landed, and Xiao Jie, a female suspect after 80, ended more than two years of absconding life and voluntarily returned to China to surrender herself. Xiao Jie was one of the first members of the criminal gang arrested, who was responsible for organizing the supply of goods in Japan, accepting orders from domestic buyers through multiple online platforms, and then remotely directing agents abroad to illegally operate new cigarettes throughout the country, and absconding after the incident. After more than two years of life as a bird of fright, he chose to return to China and surrender himself.
(Courtesy of the correspondent)