After the cross-provincial arrest, the 47-year-old veteran programmer died during the "designated residence" period, suspected of being involved in an online gambling case

CBN

2024-05-12 21:31Posted on the official account of Shanghai CBN

A few days ago, the online post "Xing Yanjun's Family|Hulunbuir was arrested across provinces, my brother died during his residence, crying for the autonomous region to investigate the truth" once went viral.

"On the morning of April 3, 2024, Xing Yanjun died unnaturally in the finger room. After Xing Yanjun's death, our family did not receive a notice from the public security organs at the first time, but learned through various channels in the evening of the same day that the person had died. As for the statement that the cause of death was self-hanging, our family believes that there are a lot of suspicions, and we have raised these doubts and demands to the Xinzuoqi Public Security Bureau, the procuratorate, and the Hulunbuir City Procuratorate, but we have not received any response so far. The post said.

The lawyer and his family said that after the procuratorate made a decision not to approve the arrest, Xing Yanjun and others could be released on bail pending trial and go home directly. However, the police have taken measures against these people.

According to the information obtained by the first financial reporter, after Xing Yanjun's death, his brother Xing Yuejun came to the Xinzuoqi Public Security Bureau to ask the police about the cause of his brother's death, and questioned why the police could not guarantee his life and death since it was "residential surveillance at a designated location". He told reporters that he had just met his brother on April 1 and that he was nothing wrong at the time. The police replied that the case had been taken care of by the Municipal Bureau and the Municipal Procuratorate, and that it was not counted as what they said, and that they were only responsible for contacting the family and communicating and reporting.

The family told Yicai that Xing Yanjun's autopsy has been completed.

On the Internet, information such as "cross-provincial arrest", "suicide during the designated residence" and "online casino" in this case have become hotly discussed keywords.

Yicai contacted the New Left Banner Public Security Bureau by phone, and the officer on duty said that the relevant case and interview matters need to be handled by the leadership. As of press time, Yicai has not received a follow-up reply.

"6.29" project

According to the statement in the online post, on November 8, 2023, 14 employees of Youyou Interactive (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Youyou Interactive") were detained by the Public Security Bureau of Xinbarhu Left Banner (referred to as "New Left Banner") in Hulunbuir City on suspicion of opening a casino. The poster's younger brother, Xing Yanjun, is the general manager of the company. After that, Xing Yanjun and others were detained in the Xinzuoqi Detention Center in Hulunbuir City. Twelve of them were placed under residential surveillance at a designated location.

"Ping An New Left Banner" and "China Chang'an Net" have detailed reports on the arrest process: In June 2023, the New Left Banner Police Support Brigade found that more than a dozen residents in the jurisdiction were gambling online. The party committee of the New Left Banner Public Security Bureau attached great importance to it and immediately dispatched capable forces from various departments to set up a "29 June" task force, which was found to be an organized gang that relied on gambling websites to commit crimes. The gang operates as a corporatized company, recharging and exchanging gold coins for gamblers on the website, and setting up fake robots to make profits from them, and the turnover involved in the case has reached 100 million yuan in just over two months, involving 27 provinces (autonomous regions) and municipalities across the country.

"At the beginning of November, the special case group discovered through secret investigation that the gang was operating a gambling website operating company in disguise in an office building in Chaoyang District, Beijing, and after several days and nights of squatting, on November 8, the special case group smashed the gambling website operating company in one fell swoop, and arrested all 14 main suspects headed by Dang Moumou. On the morning of November 16, the New Left Banner Public Security Bureau held a ceremony to welcome the triumphant return of the '6.29' task force to Beijing for arrest. Liu Xiaohui, deputy flag chief, secretary of the party committee and director of the Public Security Bureau, extended a warm welcome to the "6.29" special case group to arrest the police officers who had returned from Beijing in triumph, and cordially shook hands with the police of the special case group one by one. ”

In the aerial footage of the New Left Banner Rong Media, the police car opened the road on a snowy day, the bus drove from Beijing to the New Left Banner in Inner Mongolia, and the suspects were escorted out wearing hoods.

According to the introduction of "Ping An New Left Banner", the successful detection of the cross-border online gambling case by traveling thousands of miles is another major breakthrough in the new Balhu Left Banner Public Security Bureau's crackdown on illegal crimes. As of November 16, 2023, a total of 6 suspected online gambling gangs have been detected and 46 suspects have been arrested. 12 cases of telecommunications fraud were detected, 3.2325 million yuan was successfully stopped, 1.0227 million yuan of funds involved in the case were frozen, 311,000 yuan of victims' losses were returned, and 68 suspects in telecommunications network fraud cases were arrested.

Doubts and controversies

Xing Yanjun's family raised a number of questions about the police's handling procedures, one of which was "whether Hulunbuir has jurisdiction over this case".

"Youyou Interactive Company is registered in Beijing, Xing Yanjun's household registration is Beijing, and his habitual residence is also Beijing, the company has not carried out business in Hulunbuir, and my brother and Hulunbuir City have never intersected, why does the Hulunbuir Xinzuoqi Public Security Department want to cross more than 1,500 kilometers to escort back the staff of the game company far away in Beijing, and freeze the bank accounts in the names of the company and executives?" The family said.

The family members believe that on 15 December last year, the New Left Banner Procuratorate had already made a decision not to approve the arrest, indicating that after examination, the procuratorate held that Xing Yanjun did not meet the conditions for arrest and should be released immediately and released on bail pending trial.

His lawyer told Yicai: "The reason for the police intervention is that the company is suspected of opening a casino, but legally speaking, the jurisdiction is under the control of the Inner Mongolia Public Security, and this matter is very controversial." The general way to deal with the rejection of arrest is release on bail pending further investigation, and whether the adoption of RSDL is lawful is controversial in practice and belongs to the ambiguity of the law. ”

After the arrest, the related games of Youyou Interactive have been removed from the shelves, and whether the platform is involved in gambling is also a focus of controversy in the case.

Yicai noticed that in October last year, some parents reported on the "Black Cat Complaint" platform that the 12-year-old child at home was "harvested" by the game system robot and induced to recharge 2,000 yuan.

However, Youyou Interactive denied that its business involved gambling.

Dang Kulun, the actual controller of Youyou Interactive, believes: "The logic of chess and card games is that you recharge to buy virtual currency, and then go to entertainment, you can also get virtual currency by watching advertisements and other ways. If you play well, you may not spend a penny, and if you don't play well, you have to recharge. He also took the domestic mainstream landlord, mahjong and other games as an analogy, thinking that the model is the same. Virtual currencies cannot be cashed out, and there is no gambling problem.

But can virtual currencies be traded over-the-counter? Dang Kulun told the first financial reporter that there is a gray industry of reselling accounts on the Internet, and the company's account ban is still relatively strict, but it is not 100% manageable. Chinese games are all real-name system, and you can only resell accounts, not coins. The company's operation is legal and compliant, and it has also been listed on the Apple App Store, and the turnover and number of users are the first in China in similar applications.

Xing Yanjun's family and lawyer also objected to the accusation of opening a casino, arguing that the entertainment mode of the game products involved in the case was as follows: the player (gamer) registers an account to enter the game platform, obtains gold coins (virtual currency) from the platform, or the player buys (consumes) gold coins from the platform, the player conducts poker entertainment on the game platform, and wins and losses are settled through gold coins. Regardless of the player's win or loss result in the game, the platform will not convert the gold coins in the account into cash or property in the reverse direction. Game coins can only be used on the game platform in question, and no exchange or transaction is allowed outside the game platform. Based on the above facts, the gaming platform involved in the case is not a gambling website, does not accept gambling bets, does not provide gambling to others, and does not develop or allow third parties to engage in agency activities and accept bets. More importantly, the game platform involved in the case cannot and does not allow the game gold coins to be 'realized', that is, the players' gold coins are not allowed to be exchanged for cash or property, and there is no "closed loop" of input-output gambling funds in this case. Therefore, there is no act of opening a casino as stipulated in the Criminal Law and relevant judicial interpretations in this case.

There have been cases of gambling in China before, especially during the industry rectification period around 2018.

In 2018, Zhang Wei, the legal representative of Shenzhen Oriental Boya Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Boyaa Company), the operator of Texas Hold'em poker games, and more than 20 employees of the company were detained one after another. Another well-known online game company, Lianzhong's chess and card division, was also investigated by the police for the same issue. In September 2018, Tencent announced the removal of "Everyday Texas Hold'em".

In December 2019, the court of first instance held that Zhang Wei used the Texas Hold'em game online platform to sell game currency in order to obtain illegal benefits, and then established an exchange channel between game currency and RMB, and the amount was huge, and he was convicted of opening a casino and sentenced to 4 years in prison, and 26 other people were also sentenced for the same crime. More than 942 million yuan was identified as criminal proceeds. Zhang Wei and others were not satisfied and appealed.

In June 2021, the Hebei Provincial High People's Court ruled in the second instance that some of the facts ascertained in the first-instance judgment were still unclear, revoked the first-instance judgment, and remanded the case for retrial.

Veteran programmer

According to industrial and commercial information, Youyou Interactive was established in 2018 and is 100% controlled by Youyou (Tianjin) Technology Co., Ltd. The latter is controlled by 7 natural person shareholders, with Dang Coulomb as the actual controller and chairman, accounting for 50.4% of the shares; Xing Yanjun is the second largest shareholder and general manager, accounting for 17% of the shares.

Dang Coulomb used to be the actual controller of the Hong Kong-listed company China Intelligent Transportation (1900.HK), and then cashed out and still has a small amount of equity.

He introduced to Yicai that he is a financial investor of Youyou Interactive. The company's main development application is "Poker Athletic League", and the game version number is obtained through the acquisition of Jiangsu Junmu Information Technology Co., Ltd. The company originally planned to play the game overseas, but did not open up the situation, the main revenue is still in Chinese mainland, and Dang Kulun is abroad all the year round, so the actual operation of the company is in charge of Xing Yanjun.

On May 10, Dang Coulomb told Yicai that except for three executives, the rest of the employees had been released, and his real estate in Beijing worth 50 million yuan and millions of yuan on domestic bank cards were frozen, and he would seek legal proceedings.

Dang Kulun said that most of the company's employees, including Xing Yanjun, are highly educated or from well-known Internet companies, and the company gives them better treatment, so there is no need to be involved in gambling.

Xing Yuejun and Dang Kulun introduced to Yicai that Xing Yanjun, 47 years old, a native of Inner Mongolia, graduated from Inner Mongolia University of Technology in 2000 majoring in power engineering, and turned to program development because of his interest. He used to be under Lei Jun, served as a middle-level in YY Voice and Kingsoft, and also led the development of the well-known software "Kingsoft Shadow Ba".

In November 2012, Huanju Group (i.e. YY) was listed on the NASDAQ, Xing Yuejun said that his younger brother had the original shares of the company and was already financially free around 2013, but his younger brother still had some persistent pursuit of technology and was a little introverted in his personality.

Tianyan check shows that Xing Yanjun serves as a shareholder and executive in a number of technology companies in Beijing and Inner Mongolia. Xing Yanjun's Facebook page shows that he is the CEO of Beijing Hongmeng Times Information Technology Co., Ltd.; CTO of Hejuntong Beijing Information Technology Co., Ltd.: From March 14, 2016 to June 1, 2017, he served as CTO of Horgos Wuli Network Technology Co., Ltd.

Yicai found that Wuxi Wuli Technology Co., Ltd. was listed on the New Third Board (831249), and Xing Yanjun once served as a supervisor in the company and resigned in July 2018. Dang Kulun said that Xing Yanjun had wanted to develop a short video platform, but it was too late to enter the game in 2018 and did not succeed.

On May 8, Xing Yanjun's family posted again, saying that when the lawyer went to the Hulunbuir Municipal People's Procuratorate to communicate the progress of the case, the prosecutor informed the lawyer that he had decided to conduct an autopsy on Xing Yanjun on May 9.

On May 9, Xing Yanjun's family told CBN that the autopsy had been completed, and "I was watching at the scene, and my head was blank." From Xing Yanjun's death to the autopsy, the family believes that their right to know is not guaranteed.

(This article is from Yicai)

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