There is no doubt about the development of network technology, and the advent of the 5G era has also made the public's dependence on the network more and more increased.
Naturally, this is not uncommon in cybercrime cases. Among them are the so-called "wool picking".
Take advantage of the loopholes of the online platform to make profits, and take advantage of the mistakes of merchants to make profits. So, how does the leakage "wool picking" that uses the loopholes of the online platform to obtain property produce criminal behavior?
Case Summary
"Wool picking" basically comes from e-commerce platforms, especially refers to the behavior of actors participating in merchant platform activities through online platforms to obtain benefits in the Internet era.
Naturally, there are cheapers to take advantage of, and while consumers get benefits, there are also many people who use other people's information to make profits.
In April 2018, Xu used multiple clients to log in to the same account at the same time in order to obtain a package exchange coupon under a food brand.
In the state of self-service ordering to be paid, use another client to refund the exchange coupon, and at the same time, cancel the original order return coupon or confirm the order to obtain the meal pickup code, so that the malicious cancellation of the order and then the final refund of the coupon is selected, or the refund operation is carried out after the exchange coupon is used.
Xu seems to have no loss by "canceling and clicking", but in fact, in the rebate coupon that caused the malicious cancellation of the order, Xu's behavior caused the food company to lose more than 58,000 yuan one after another.
So the question is the same, from canceling the order to clicking on the order, and even finally clicking on the refund for exchange, how did Xu cause the loss of the food company?
Explain the law with cases
In fact, Xu's behavior was to discover a loophole in the use of package exchange coupons on the food company's APP, which was embodied in the fact that Xu could still use the package exchange coupons he purchased normally after he refunded them.
Xu was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to two years in prison and fined 6,000 yuan.
Article 266 of the Criminal Law [Crime of Fraud] Whoever defrauds public or private property, and the amount is relatively large, is to be sentenced to up to three years imprisonment, short-term detention or controlled release, and/or a fine;
where the amount is huge or there are other serious circumstances, a sentence of between 3 and 10 years imprisonment and a concurrent fine is to be given;
where the amount is especially huge or there are other especially serious circumstances, a sentence of 10 or more years imprisonment or indefinite imprisonment is to be given, and a concurrent fine or confiscation of property.
Where this Law provides otherwise, follow those provisions.
In fact, there are different theories about the verdict of Xu, but in the procuratorate's view, if the perpetrator commits the act of fabricating facts and concealing the truth, it constitutes fraud, and if the perpetrator commits the act of secret theft, it constitutes theft, and the court applies different crimes through the judgment of the defendant's conduct.
Xu's act of using loopholes in the online platform to obtain property in order to redeem gift certificates is a "fraud" of fabricating facts and concealing the truth, or a "stealing" of secretly stealing the victim's property.
Therefore, the trial court held that the defendant Xu took advantage of the loophole that the data of the food software ordering system was not synchronized and adopted a false transaction to obtain property, and then found that Xu constituted the crime of fraud rather than theft.
Then the question also arises, how to determine the behavior of using the loopholes of the online platform to obtain property?
In the case of the defendant Xu, it was the sale of exchange coupons on a second-hand trading platform to obtain property, and can this kind of "false product" appearing on the Internet be regarded as property within the meaning of the criminal law?
Although virtual property "exists in the online virtual space, it has actual use value and exchange value, so since it has the value of equivalent exchange, it has the economic value of the property, so it can be regarded as the object of property crimes in the criminal law."
The value of Xu's food coupons is that they have both use value and exchange value, which can be used by themselves, exchanged for food packages, reflecting their use value, and sold through online transactions to reflect their exchange value.
In addition, in the traditional criminal law, the deception in the crime of fraud is understood as "fabricating facts" and "concealing the truth", and the perpetrator achieves a misunderstanding by transmitting untrue information to the deceived person and disposes of property based on the misunderstanding.
The crime of fraud requires that there is objective deception, and when there is no deception, the establishment of the crime of fraud can be directly denied.
However, the court analyzed whether the machine could be deceived and held that the "people" behind the "machine" of the automatic ordering system had a misunderstanding due to the data being out of sync. It is the person behind the machine who thinks that he has not been deceived.
The emergence of platform vulnerabilities is also due to the fact that the actor made a mistake in designing the program, and the machine delivered points, coupons and other property according to the wrong program, and there was no awareness of punishment, so the current online platform cannot fall into the misunderstanding and dispose of property.
So, what are the thoughts about using the loopholes of online platforms to obtain money?
There is no difference in essence between the use of online platform pricing errors and the use of online platform vulnerabilities to take advantage of the victim's fault to make profits.
Therefore, it is necessary to intensify the crackdown on gray and black industries such as "wool picking", and on the other hand, it is necessary to strengthen the supervision of online platforms and reduce the loopholes of online platforms.
Although the risk is not actively created by the actor, but the actor is aware of the existence of the danger and maliciously takes advantage of the danger to harm the lawful interests of others, it is still a harmful act, and it is an infringement of legal interests.
However, cracking down on the use of network vulnerabilities to obtain property still requires the long-term joint efforts of all parties on the platform.