The Paper's senior reporter Zhu Yiyi
The sales of game point cards in the past 6 years of the three game online stores have reached 25 billion yuan, what kind of mysteries are hidden behind the game point cards?
Recently, the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau Economic Investigation Corps, together with the Baoshan Public Security Sub-Bureau, in accordance with the requirements of the deployment of the "Lijian No. 1" special operation, with the vigorous cooperation of the Guangdong and Fujian police, together with the foreign exchange management departments, successfully cracked the city's first case of "underground money banks" illegally engaged in fund exchange under the guise of selling game point cards, arrested more than 20 criminal suspects, destroyed 3 illegal network exchange platforms, and seized an unpaid game point card worth 20 million yuan, involving more than 25 billion yuan.
Pages of transactions seized by the police. Courtesy of Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau
In the early stage, the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau conducted a nationwide deployment of the "J-21" special operation to crack down on the use of offshore companies and underground money banks to transfer stolen funds abroad, relying on the achievements of smart public security construction, a large number of suspicious capital account groups were found, and some people were suspected of illegally engaging in RMB exchange business.
Mobile phone seized by the police
Transaction cards seized by the police
The Economic Investigation Corps of the Municipal Public Security Bureau immediately set up a joint special case team together with the Baoshan Public Security Sub-Bureau to carry out a case filing and investigation. Starting from the suspicious account, the police dug out a suspicious overseas website along the line, and identified the actual operators of the website, Wan and Huang, and thus discovered several illegal online exchange platforms.
After investigation, since October 2015, the criminal gang headed by criminal suspects Wan X and Huang X, in order to obtain illegal benefits, has set up overseas servers on their own, and without the approval of the relevant state departments, has privately set up an illegal network exchange platform to attract domestic foreign exchange customers and provide foreign exchange services for others in local and foreign currencies.
Taking the foreign exchange exchange customer as an example, the customer can transfer the foreign currency to the overseas game point card dealer account designated by the customer service according to the guidance of the website customer service. After obtaining game point cards and passwords from overseas dealers, the criminal gangs sell the above-mentioned point cards to domestic game point card dealers, and then realize them into RMB, and after deducting handling fees ranging from 5% to 10%, the remaining funds are transferred to the domestic account designated by the customer.
In just six years, criminal gangs have illegally exchanged 25 billion yuan in foreign exchange through the above methods.
The criminal gang was brought back
In this case, the criminal suspect aimed at the international circulation and price stability of the Internet game point card, linked it to the value of the currency by means of a custom exchange rate, and used it as a medium connecting domestic and foreign regions to carry out illegal foreign exchange transactions, thus putting a "legal" cloak on illegal activities.
The internal division of labor of the criminal gang is clear, and the criminal suspect Wan Mou and others have recruited several domestic game point card dealers to facilitate their illegal exchange business, thus forming a criminal industrial chain including management group, sales group, point card group, receipt group and other links.
In accordance with the relevant laws and regulations of the State, if the illegal trading of foreign exchange disrupts market order outside the trading venues prescribed by the State, it is suspected of illegal business operation crimes. Illegally engaging in capital exchange activities seriously undermines economic and financial security and foreign exchange management order, and is more likely to become a channel for criminals to transfer hidden stolen funds and evade seizure and recovery. Individuals who exchange local and foreign currencies through such illegal online exchange platforms are suspected of violating the law and need to bear corresponding legal responsibilities.
In the next stage, the Shanghai police will further promote the special operation of "LiJian No. 1", continue to pay close attention to major risk-based economic crimes such as underground money bank crimes, and strive to achieve concentrated crackdowns on similar crimes, deepening of organized crimes, attacking new types of crimes, and coordinating the use of police resources, and fully safeguarding the city's economic and financial security and stability.
Editor-in-Charge: Gong Chinese
Proofreader: Luan Meng