When playing games, some people will choose to spend money to buy equipment in order to have a better game experience, so what should I do if the game equipment I spent money on is stolen? Is the virtual property of game equipment considered property? Is the theft of game equipment considered theft? Let's first look at what happened to Ms. Li in Wuhan, Hubei.
The game gear that has been accumulated for years is stolen
The value is more than 100,000 yuan
Ms. Li from Wuhan, Hubei Province, is a veteran player of an online game, and she has saved a lot of equipment in the game over the years, some of which are the best equipment purchased at a high price, with a total value of more than 100,000 yuan. However, one night in 2022, when she logged into the game as usual, she found that all the equipment in the game was gone, and the anxious Ms. Li remembered that that morning, she had lent her account password to a game friend with the online name "Demon King".
Informant Ms. Li: It's our game family, sometimes he will borrow the number, because my equipment is also good, it belongs to the kind of more homogeneous, they sometimes borrow it, and I will give it.
After discovering that the game equipment was missing, Ms. Li hurriedly contacted her friend who borrowed the number to inquire about the situation, but the answer she got surprised her.
Reporter: Ms. Li: He said that I had never been on it, and I had never asked you for a password.
Realizing that something was wrong, Ms. Li quickly called the police. After receiving the report, the police must first confirm the value of these gaming equipment before they can carry out further work.
Fu Xin, police officer of Jinyinhu Police Station, Dongxihu District Bureau, Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: It involves a virtual property, which we have never encountered, and whether this virtual property has this market value needs to be further determined.
Yu Yecheng, deputy director of the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: If there is no way to determine the value of a virtual item, I have no way to say how to calculate the standard for filing a case.
Game equipment is virtual property
How is value determined?
However, the equipment in the game is all virtual items, and the people's police cannot find its reference value like the items in reality, so how can we determine the value of these equipment? After analysis and judgment, the people's police have determined a preliminary plan.
Yu Yecheng, deputy director of the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: This price does not mean that we will be as much as the victim says. We have to pass, the first one is an endorsement of the game merchants, we found multiple game merchants to compare prices. Then we also do an approval with the game company to see if they recognize the value. Then we list a list of the missing equipment through this multi-party identification, and finally we recognize the value of the equipment through the joint evidence of the three parties, and then make a preliminary value estimate.
Find a game merchant
Price the stolen items
In order to make a reasonable assessment of the value of the stolen equipment, the police set up a new account, entered the online game played by Ms. Li, as an ordinary player, to understand the price in the game, and looked for game merchants in the game who specialized in buying and selling virtual props and real money, and asked these merchants to price Ms. Li's stolen items.
Fu Xin, police officer of Jinyinhu Police Station, Dongxihu District Bureau of Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: Game merchants want to give this price to more than 80 pieces of this product one by one, and then send the relevant information back to us.
Multi-party joint assessment
The exact value was determined to be more than 130,000 yuan
In this process, the police met many players in the game, and after learning that the police were investigating and collecting evidence for the stolen virtual property, enthusiastic players helped the police one after another. After several months of busyness, with the joint efforts and cautious evaluation of the police and the marketing department, a large number of identification work was successfully completed, and Ms. Li's stolen game assets were finally obtained an accurate value.
Fu Xin, a police officer from the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: After we collected all the information, we sent it to this price department, and they conducted a comprehensive identification and determined that the value of the stolen goods was more than 130,000 yuan.
Investigate the activity of your gaming friends
It was found that it did not match the login location
Ms. Li's stolen game equipment was finally determined to have a total value of more than 130,000 yuan, and after this value determination, the next job of the police was to find the suspect. So, who stole the valuable virtual items, and according to Ms. Li's account, she lent her gaming account to her gaming friend, could it be that friend stole the equipment?
According to Ms. Li's description, the person who borrowed the game account from her at that time was a friend with the online name "Demon King", and she and the other party had known each other in the game for many years and had borrowed accounts before. If it was the other party who stole the equipment, Ms. Li didn't believe it, so who would it be if it wasn't him?
Subsequently, the police launched an investigation into the friend named "Demon King" and found that his activity trajectory did not match the login location of Ms. Li's account on the day of the theft.
In addition, when borrowing an account from Ms. Li, the login location of the "Demon King" game account did not match the actual location of the friend. According to this friend, he has lent the game account of "Demon King" to many netizens. According to the analysis and judgment of the police, it is likely that someone stole the game account of the "Demon King".
Fu Xin, a police officer from the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: It was found that the "Demon King" did not have a criminal motive for theft, because this "Demon King" had also given the game account to many friends of the game to use, and through his account, it could only be found that his login place was in Enshi, Hubei, but there were no further clues.
Track down the stolen gaming gear
Look for new leads
Starting from the game account, they could only determine the login location of the other party at that time, and could not get other clues, so the police decided to change their thinking and start with the stolen game equipment to find clues again.
Fu Xin, a police officer from the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: Since the suspect committed a theft of game equipment, his purpose must be to sell the game equipment for cash. So through a retrospective of the equipment circulation path, we can find out where the original destination of these game equipment is, as well as the game equipment that has not been sold, where it is currently temporarily stored.
Yu Yecheng, deputy director of the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: Because the game has a direction of equipment, which player is in the hands of the player, we will find the relevant players who received these equipment, there are multiple players, and then find the seller through these players.
Different accounts that sell stolen gear
It's the same person behind it
The police entered the game again as a "gamer", looking for clues in the information on the sale of various game equipment, because the value of the game equipment stolen by Ms. Li was relatively high and very rare, and soon the police found the current owner of these equipment in the game. It is understood that the equipment of several holders was recently purchased, and although the equipment was sold by several different game accounts, the police investigation found that the same person was behind these game accounts. The police further investigated and finally locked up the man Hu in Enshi, Hubei, and after the investigation around Hu, the police confirmed that Hu was suspected of committing a major crime. After locking Hu's whereabouts, the Wuhan police went to Enshi to arrest him.
Fu Xin, a police officer from the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: With the strong cooperation of the local police, the criminal suspect Hu was successfully arrested in an e-sports room in Enshi, Hubei.
So, how did Hu know that Ms. Li's account contained valuable equipment, and how did he steal the account of the netizen "Demon King" to defraud Ms. Li's account password?
Yu Yecheng, deputy director of the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: He has this experience of game training, and he saw our victim Li through watching the live broadcast on the Internet, and he showed a large amount of valuable game equipment in her game in the live broadcast. Then Hu Mou has been relatively short of money recently, and he has this idea of stealing other people's accounts to sell equipment and making money.
Pretend to be a gaming friend
Fraudulent account and password theft
Because the criminal suspect Hu had helped the netizen "Demon King" train the game account and also kept the account password of the "Demon King", after Hu found out that Ms. Li and the "Demon King" were friends, he thought of impersonating her identity to defraud Ms. Li's account password.
Yu Yecheng, deputy director of the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: He tried to use the "Demon King" account to obtain Ms. Li's relevant account.
constitutes the crime of theft
He was sentenced to three years in prison
After the theft was successful, Hu sold some of the stolen equipment to players in the game at a very low price, making a total profit of more than 50,000 yuan, and the remaining unsold equipment was in his game account. After the criminal suspect Hu was brought into the case, he said that he thought that he had just stolen other people's virtual property on the Internet and did not have to bear legal responsibility, but according to the provisions of the Criminal Law, game equipment is a kind of virtual property, and virtual property is also protected by law. Where the value of the theft of virtual property reaches a relatively large amount, the crime of theft is constituted and criminal responsibility may be pursued. In January 2024, the Dongxihu District People's Court of Wuhan City sentenced Hu to three years in prison for theft.
Yu Yecheng, deputy director of the Jinyinhu Police Station of the Dongxihu District Bureau of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau: Whether it is property in the virtual environment or property in real life, as long as you obtain these things through illegal means, and then sell them. The property then obtained will still be considered theft.
Editor/Zhu Wei