Inner Mongolia Cyber Evil Force Case Defendants Sentenced for Multiple Crimes
TapTechNews May 23rd news, according to the information from the Cyberspace Administration of the Ministry of Public Security. Recently, the People's Court of Zhungeer Banner, Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, publicly sentenced a recently tried case involving a cyber evil force. Thirteen defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 years and 6 months to 11 months respectively for the crimes of extortion, forced trading, illegal business operation, and obstruction of testimony, and were also fined from 241,900 yuan to 2,000 yuan respectively.
TapTechNews attached case review:
In late July 2022, the Ordos City cyber security department received a superior clue: The netizen Ma XX published a large amount of negative information about a certain enterprise through Sina Weibo and was suspected of extortion.
After receiving the report, the Ordos City cyber security department carried out special project management based on this clue and jointly established a joint working team with the Zhungeer Banner Public Security Bureau at the local level to conduct in-depth investigations.
Upon investigation, a criminal gang led by Song XX was entrenched in provinces such as Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Inner Mongolia. From 2021 to January 2023, they used various self-media platforms to post and re-post negative posts about enterprises, and then carried out illegal and criminal activities such as extorting enterprises.
The gang has a clear structure and strict organization. In the process of implementing the crime, Song XX unifiedly commanded and managed, and distributed the spoils to the gang members according to his will.
The gang members disguised themselves as journalists and wrote and published false information about factories and mines on their registered more than 30 online self-media accounts, and then expanded the influence by mutual re-posting and other means, forcing enterprises to spend money to delete posts, and carried out extensive criminal activities such as extortion and illegal business operation.
The gang carried out more than 20 frenzied crimes in Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and other places, using the network as a carrier, fabricating and exaggerating facts, and the group members cross-committed crimes among each other, acting as cyber water army, seriously disrupting the economic, social and living order, causing relatively bad social impacts.
More than 30 factories and mines enterprises have suffered from the extortion and forced trading of this criminal gang, with a case value of 12 million yuan.
The task force police officers traveled to 25 cities and counties in 6 provinces and autonomous regions such as Shaanxi, Gansu, Shanxi, Hebei, Henan, and Inner Mongolia to investigate and collect evidence, traveling more than 100,000 miles, successfully capturing 16 members of the criminal gang of the evil force cyber water army led by Song XX, solving 26 criminal cases, avoiding losses of 9.1 million yuan for the victimized enterprises, freezing 208,000 yuan of involved funds, and recovering 83,500 yuan.
According to Article 7 of the Interpretation of Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Handling of Criminal Cases Such as Defamation through the Use of Information Networks by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, in violation of state regulations, for the purpose of making profits, providing paid services for deleting information through the information network, or knowing that it is false information, providing paid services for publishing information through the information network, disturbing the market order, if any of the following circumstances exist, it belongs to the serious circumstances of illegal business operation, and shall be convicted and punished in accordance with Article 225(4) of the Criminal Law:
(1) The individual illegal business operation amount is more than 50,000 US dollars (about 350,000 yuan), or the illegal income amount is more than 20,000 US dollars (about 140,000 yuan);
(2) The unit illegal business operation amount is more than 150,000 US dollars (about 1.05 million yuan), or the illegal income amount is more than 50,000 US dollars (about 350,000 yuan). When the amount of the act reaches more than five times the amount stipulated in the preceding paragraph, it shall be recognized as the especially serious circumstances stipulated in Article 225 of the Criminal Law.