"Shenhao" threw 20 million yuan overnight to reward the male anchor, revealing the "money laundering" industry chain in the online live broadcast room

It was an unforgettable carnival that stunned all witnesses.

On the screen of the live broadcast room, expensive gifts such as carnivals and rockets passed by as if they didn't need money, stimulating the nerves of every viewer. When the numbers on the screen were finally frozen, the male anchor Liang Li cried with joy. After more than 8 years of live streaming on the Aix platform, this is the first time he has won the annual ceremony.

The reason why Liang Li was able to win the final championship is inseparable from the help of a "Shenhao" among the fans. After the end of this grand ceremony, there was gossip that in order to support Liang Li's victory, the "Shenhao", known as "Brother Yu", gave a gift of at least 20 million yuan that night.

It was 2019, and the momentum of online live broadcast development was still extremely rapid, and it also made many head anchors make a lot of money. However, after the revelry is over, what awaits them?

"Brother Yu" is suspected of illegal fundraising and has absconded abroad in July 2020. Liang Li, Huang Yueshi and many other big anchors of the Aix platform who are admired by "Brother Yu" were recently prosecuted by the Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Procuratorate on suspicion of helping "Brother Yu" launder money.

It is reported that this is the first case of money laundering using online live streaming to reward money in the country. The webcast industry, which has grown savagely for a long time, is once again facing compliance problems.

The "Shenhao" who spent a lot of money

Liang Li and "Brother Yu" got acquainted at the end of 2018. After many large rewards, Liang Li noticed him, and after interacting a few times, the two privately contacted each other and added WeChat.

At that time, it was the peak of the online live broadcast industry, and as one of the top anchors of the Ax platform, Liang Li had more than one company under his name and employed more than a dozen employees, including life assistants, field control personnel, operation personnel, etc. According to Liang Li's recollection, at that time, his monthly income ranged from 70 to 1.1 million yuan, and there were often large rewards from fans, who were called "big brother" and "Shenhao". "Brother Yu" was not the first to pay attention, but he was the most generous.

This boldness quickly shortened the distance between Liang Li and "Brother Yu". Not long after, Liang Li was invited by "Brother Yu" to his group headquarters in Shanghai. Liang Li saw that the group headquarters of "Brother Yu" had a building in Shanghai Hui Mansion at that time, and there was a floor dedicated to the automobile financial leasing business, and when he arrived, there were many salesmen in it who were conducting business. In Liang Li's view, this is also in line with the business content that "Brother Yu" revealed to him in private.

"He told me about the history of the family and said that there are more than 100 companies under his name. Liang Li said that "Brother Yu" claimed that the group's main business was to issue small loans, and the source of funds was in Wuhan, Jinan and other places in the hydrogen energy vehicle trading and muck car financial leasing business, "Later, a fan asked me during the live broadcast what 'Brother Yu' does, and I said that it was a small loan, a private mortgage high-interest loan."

Business matters are not what Liang Li and they are most concerned about. "We would go to Brother Yu's office every time to chat, and the general content was to go to KTV, bars, go fishing, etc. Liang Li said that in addition to him, there were other anchors on the Aix platform, such as Huang Yueshi, who were invited to play in the "Brother Yu" company.

Huang Yueshi is also a head anchor on the Ax platform. According to his recollections, he and "Brother Yu" should have known each other before Liang Li. As early as April 2018, "Brother Yu" helped arrange a party for Huang Yueshi's fans to have a party in an ancient architectural hotel in Shanghai. It was also at that time that Huang Yueshi visited the group headquarters of "Brother Yu" for the first time, leaving an impression similar to Liang Li, "very well developed" and "very good".

In addition to arranging for the anchors to eat, drink and have fun in Shanghai, "Brother Yu" also asked Liang Li to go fishing in Nantong, Qiandao Lake and other places, and meet in Shandong and Guangzhou. At the end of 2019, "Brother Yu" once again invited Liang Li and Huang Yueshi to the Philippines to play, and casinos, hotels, and Boracay Island in Manila have left their figures.

On the Aix platform, it is no secret that Liang Li, Huang Yueshi and "Brother Yu" have a close relationship. In April 2020, which coincided with the anniversary of Huang Yueshi's live broadcast, he flew from his hometown to Shanghai despite the new crown epidemic, and lived in the rest area on the top floor of the group headquarters belonging to "Brother Yu" for two weeks, and opened a number of live broadcasts. During this period, "Brother Yu" appeared many times to cheer for Huang Yueshi.

In one of the live broadcasts, Huang Yueshi declared to the camera: "Now I don't need to use my card, and face recognition will pass when I enter the house." Do you know how many of my employee accounts are?3 7s! Accounts are all leopards, and the rest of the employees are normal numbers. ”

Huang Yueshi was also invited to participate in the annual meeting of the "Brother Yu" group company, and sang two songs on stage, "Reluctantly" and "Love". According to his recollection, there were about 500 people at the scene, including dozens of investors, all of whom were middle-aged, shouting slogans such as "the company is strong" and "forging ahead", "I feel very similar to the kind of fundraising on TV."

In the mouths of fans, Liang Li and Huang Yueshi are the "Vice President Liang" and "Vice President Huang" of the "Brother Yu" Group. In the anchor circle, Liang Li and Huang Yueshi are called other names: Liang Li is the son of "Brother Yu", and Huang Yueshi is a half-son. There are also some anchors with better relationships who are godsons and neighbors' sons.

"Thunder" led to the black and gray industry in the live broadcast industry

According to later statistics, from 2018 to 2020, "Brother Yu" rewarded Liang Li with nearly 30 million yuan and Huang Yueshi with more than 10 million yuan through the Aix platform. Such a generous shot has long aroused the suspicion of others. At the beginning of 2020, some netizens posted an article on Baidu Tieba, the content directly pointed at Liang Li and other anchors, thinking that they were suspected of helping "Brother Yu" launder money.

"There is a consensus or ecology in this platform, and the boss who is willing to spend tens of millions of dollars at once is likely to have the funds to be the illegal and criminal proceeds of the black and gray industry. A former head anchor of the Aix platform revealed that according to his observation, people who give large amounts of money are divided into two parts, one is impulsive consumption, and there is no news after a month of tipping;

The anchors who were frantically rewarded by "Brother Yu" are not unaware that there may be problems in it. Another "big brother" in Liang Li's live broadcast room, whose real identity is a staff member of a village bank in the central province, embezzled tens of millions of yuan in rewards, and was arrested after the East Window incident. Because he had accepted a huge reward, Liang Li was also called by the public security organs to cooperate with the questioning.

Huang Yueshi later recalled that in June 2020, a fan added his WeChat friend and asked him if he could help get back the 1 million yuan invested in "Brother Yu" company. In order to continue to curry favor with "Brother Yu", Huang Yueshi ignored it. In the next month, many people found Huang Yueshi, all to get their investment money back, and some people even typed words like "pay back my hard-earned money" on the public screen in the live broadcast room.

At this time, "Brother Yu" borrowed money from Huang Yueshi on the grounds of difficulty in capital turnover. In order to maintain the relationship, Huang Yueshi transferred to the personal and company accounts of "Brother Yu" according to the requirements, totaling about 5.8 million yuan. But soon, the news came that "Brother Yu" had absconded abroad.

On September 10, 2020, the official Weibo of the Pudong Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau notified the investigation and handling of the case of the company under the name of "Brother Yu" suspected of illegally absorbing deposits from the public. According to the criminal verdict of the president and public relations director of the company involved in the case published by the China Judgment Document Network, the company under the name of "Brother Yu" used advertising, word of mouth and other methods to publicize it without the permission of the relevant state departments, promised high annualized returns, and sold financial leasing beneficiary rights to unspecified members of the public through offline stores, illegally raising a total of more than 1.3 billion yuan, and the principal was not paid at the time of the case. The court ruled that the act constituted the crime of illegally absorbing deposits from the public.

In the comment area of the police report, a victim left a message, pointing out that a large amount of money was used by "Brother Yu" to reward the anchor. But at the beginning, except for the suspension of broadcasting, Liang Li and others did not seem to be affected too much.

It was not until July 2021 that when the Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Procuratorate received the victim's petition, it learned that a huge amount of stolen money may have flowed into the Aix platform through live broadcasting. After nearly half a year of auditing, the prosecutor finally figured out the flow of funds, thereby locking up several anchors involved in the case, and issued a letter of prosecution to the public security organ in January 2022.

"I never watched live broadcasts before, but I didn't expect the water to be so deep and the relationship so complicated in this industry. Zhu Qijia, a prosecutor from the Seventh Procuratorate Department of the Pudong Procuratorate, said that as the case deepened, she gradually realized that live streaming tips are not only criminals squandering the victims' property, but also a new channel for them to launder money.

The "unspoken rules" provide cover for money laundering

There is a classic dialogue in the movie "Let the Bullets Fly". "Master Tang" taught "Zhang Mazi", who had just come down the mountain to become the county magistrate, how to collect money: "You have to let the gentry pay the money first, and take the people to donate money." The gentry donated, and the people followed suit. After the money arrived, the money of the gentry was returned in full, and the people's money was divided into three or seven accounts. ”

For live streaming platforms, the same is probably true. At that time, there was such an "unspoken rule" on the Ax platform: after receiving a reward from a "god" like "Brother Yu", the anchor would privately return the income to the other party. The purpose of this is twofold, on the one hand, you can gain greater fame with the help of "Shenhao" tipping, and attract more ordinary users to watch the live broadcast and reward. On the other hand, attracting more streamers to join their guilds can also make money.

This is usually the case, especially at the annual ceremony, when traffic is especially needed to win PK. The live broadcast where Liang Li cried with joy is a typical example. "If you want ranking, you don't want income, and if you want income, you don't want ranking. With this idea in mind, Liang Li found "Brother Yu" and proposed that he would spend a huge amount of money to support him to impact the championship, and his income would be returned in full after the matter was completed. "Brother Yu", who had not yet "exploded" at that time, agreed without hesitation, and also said, "Don't let Liang Li return the money within 20 million." ”

Later, with the support of "Brother Yu" spending more than 20 million yuan overnight, Liang Li got his wish. Afterwards, he also fulfilled his promise, deducting the 12 million yuan taken away by the Aix platform, and returned the remaining 8 million yuan of personal income to "Brother Yu" through other channels.

"This method of returning money can be used as a means of money laundering with a little use. Zhu Qijia said, for example, sometimes in order to win a reward of 10 million yuan from "Shenhao", the anchor will privately promise to return the money afterwards, but also pay 200-3 million yuan out of his own pocket. In this way, after deducting the 6 million yuan taken by the platform, "Shenhao" can also get 600-7 million yuan, "which is equivalent to paying 30%-40% of the cost and successfully laundering the money." ”

In addition to this, the official deposit coins launched by the Aix platform also facilitate the laundering of a large amount of money. According to the regulations, the exchange ratio between the official recharge coins and RMB used for on-site consumption and tipping is 1:1, but there are "currency dealers" active on the network all year round, selling accounts with a large number of recharge coins at discounted prices.

"Although I can't tell whether the money used for these coins is gambling or fraud, I can be sure that there are a lot of illegal funds in it. Liang Li said that because the recharge coins can only be purchased through official channels, those who are willing to sell at a loss and at a low price must have a problem with the source of funds. An obvious example is that during the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the discount range of recharge coins ranged from the usual 7-8.5% off to 6% off, which shows that a large number of gambling funds have bought recharge coins in the short term and are eager to launder them, so they will sell them at a low price.

So, who is buying these low-priced recharge coins in large quantities? Liang Li said frankly that many times the buyers are precisely the big anchors and guilds at the head of the platform. The purpose is to use other trumpets to reward streamers of the same guild during PK competitions such as annual festivals to strive for better rankings. Some people in the industry even believe that the decline of the online live broadcast industry in recent years is not only due to the bottleneck of the development of the industry, but also because the state has increased its crackdown on upstream crimes such as online gambling and telecom fraud, resulting in less "black money" that can flow to the live broadcast platform.

Even putting aside the illegal crime of money laundering, in the eyes of industry insiders, this kind of "self-tipping" behavior has been suspected of false propaganda and misleading consumers. Because there are still many ordinary viewers in the live broadcast room of the head anchor, they may be stimulated and spend more money on tipping.

Once again, the industry is facing compliance challenges

Although many anchors on the Aix platform who came to the case admitted that there is such an "unspoken rule" in the circle, it is still very difficult to convict legally. To some extent, this is one of the reasons why this money laundering channel is difficult to cut off.

In the case of money laundering, understanding where money is going is key. However, in the process of live broadcast rewarding, there are too many links involved, which makes it difficult to find out.

"In addition to using his own account and company account, 'Brother Yu' will also use the registered account, or the accounts of subordinates and friends to recharge and reward the anchor. The return of Liang Li and others is not the same way back, sometimes through the people around them, and then transferred to the wife, lover, and people around 'Brother Yu', etc. Zhu Qijia said that in this way, the flow of funds between the anchors and "Brother Yu" is like a mess, which brings great difficulty to the audit work.

From receiving clues in July 2021 to start the audit, to June 2022, when the public security organs filed a case against Liang Li and other anchors on suspicion of money laundering, to the first instance trial in the Pudong Court in late February this year, this case has lasted more than two and a half years. In the indictment of some of the anchors involved in the case obtained by the reporter, the public prosecution accused Liang Li of returning more than 900 yuan to "Brother Yu" and Huang Yueshi returning more than 500 yuan, which is far less than the amount of tips actually received by the two.

Another difficulty lies in how to prove that the anchors "know" that "Brother Yu" has a problem with their money. Only when this is proved can the return of money by the anchors constitute the crime of money laundering in the legal sense.

In this regard, the anchors who are well versed in the "unspoken rules" actually have their own set of ways to "protect themselves". In the process of dealing with "Brother Yu" and exchanging funds, they never asked in detail how the money came from, and they deliberately avoided the word "money laundering" in their daily interactions.

Every time they transfer money to "Brother Yu", the remarks are written on other matters, such as "Late Father's Day Red Envelope", "I heard that Big Brother is short of computers", "Happy Qixi Big Brother, on the package" and so on. In addition, these fund transactions will also be in the name of loans, such as the more than 5 million yuan transferred by Huang Yueshi to "Brother Yu", but these huge loans did not leave any receipts or other certificates.

Therefore, after review, the Pudong Procuratorate believes that the anchors' behavior is actually pretending to be stupid. "We believe that 'knowing' in law does not mean that it is enough to tell you that there is a problem with my money, but that as an adult, you should be able to detect abnormalities through your own common sense. Zhu Qijia said that in this case, there is actually a lot of evidence to prove that Liang Li and others are pretending not to know and trying to evade legal punishment.

In addition to the above-mentioned anchors who are familiar with the "unspoken rules" on the platform and the victims who ask the anchor for investment money, Huang Yueshi's performance in the last live broadcast is even more obvious. Seeing that no one had swiped the gift for a long time, he publicly shouted: "Is there a big brother who gives me a gift, I will return the money to you and help you launder the money." 10 minutes after saying this, Huang Yueshi was arrested by the police who came to the door.

As the country's first money laundering case using online live broadcast to reward money, the trial process of the case has attracted much attention in the circle. It is understood that at least 100 anchors have formed a WeChat group to keep an eye on the latest developments in the case. If a number of anchors who were prosecuted in this case are finally found guilty by the court, it will inevitably have a huge impact on the future development of the entire industry.

"We hope that through the successful handling of this case, more anchors will realize that it is possible to be sentenced for doing so, and perhaps it will reduce the occurrence of some money laundering crimes. Zhu Qijia revealed that in addition to handling cases, the procuratorate is also guiding the Ex platform to carry out corporate compliance and plugging loopholes in the system as much as possible.

(Liang Li, Huang Yueshi, "Brother Yu", and Ex platforms are pseudonyms)