The first case of rewarding money laundering by webcasting in China was solved, with a case value of nearly 100 million yuan and 21 people arrested.

　　In the money laundering case of live webcast, Shanghai police arrested the suspect in other places. Shanghai Public Security Bureau

　　May 15th is the 14th national publicity day for public security organs to crack down on and prevent economic crimes. Reporter The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) learned from the press conference held by the Shanghai Public Security Bureau that since the beginning of this year, the Shanghai public security organs have closely combined with the theme education to further promote the "Lijian 2023" series of crackdown and rectification actions, and have detected more than 1,300 cases of economic crimes, recovering economic losses of more than 2.8 billion yuan, effectively boosting the continuous optimization and continuous improvement of Shanghai’s business environment and economic order.

　　Among the more than 1,300 cases detected, the case of "rewarding" money laundering by webcasting was the first in China. In this case, Shanghai police arrested 21 suspects and smashed a new money laundering criminal industrial chain parasitic on webcasting platforms and transferring illegal fund-raising, involving nearly 100 million yuan.

　　Fund-raising fraud funds are used for live broadcast rewards.

　　In the early stage, Pudong Branch of Shanghai Public Security Bureau filed a case of fund-raising fraud, and found out that the suspect set up a number of companies from January 2018 to July 2020. In the name of the transfer of the income right of new energy vehicle financing lease, he promised high profits to the public through offline stores, sold various wealth management products, and then illegally raised funds, and finally squandered them. After the criminal suspects arrived at the case one after another, the police continued to promote the memorial service and strive to recover the economic losses for the people to the maximum extent.

　　In June last year, in the process of tracing the funds involved, the police found that a huge sum of money was used to recharge and reward a webcast platform. Although the police have seen many criminal suspects squander their money in the process of handling cases, it is rare to use huge sums of money to reward anchors, which has attracted the attention of the police.

　　Starting from this, the police fully sorted out the details of the records in which the money involved was used to recharge and reward. With the deepening of the investigation, the police found that the suspect of fund-raising fraud would receive a huge sum of money from the network anchor in his personal account shortly after recharging and rewarding the network anchor. The Shanghai Public Security Economic Investigation Department immediately set up a task force to carry out case investigation, and quickly locked in four network anchors with suspicious behaviors such as centralized batch payment afterwards, such as Li.

　　Reward money laundering through live broadcast to achieve "win-win"?

　　Taking network anchors as the starting point, the police dug deep and found that these anchors had been closely associated with fund-raising fraud suspects. After further careful investigation, the police successfully dug up a new money laundering criminal channel in which a few network anchors accepted rewards to "brush traffic" and cleaned and transferred money for fund-raising fraud gangs.

　　After investigation, from June 2019 to July 2020, the above-mentioned fund-raising fraud suspects got to know the criminal suspect Li and others who acted as anchors on a webcast platform in order to transfer the hidden proceeds of crime, and proposed that they reward gifts in the live broadcast room of Li and others, so as to boost the popularity and exposure of the live broadcast, help them earn the top prize on the live broadcast platform, and instruct Li and others to return the reward money collected to the personal account of the fund-raising fraud suspect afterwards.

　　After the job is done, Li and others can also collect part of the commission as a reward. Subsequently, Li and others, knowing that the reward money was the proceeds of fund-raising fraud, collected the money by accepting rewards during the live broadcast, and exchanged the reward money by means of cash withdrawal and transfer, so as to clean and transfer the money for the criminal suspect.

　　Reward coins into money laundering tools.

　　Not only that, but after further investigation, the police found that since October 2020, many suspects of telecom fraud and online gambling have met Fan and others who were employees of Li’s live studio at that time through social software. In order to help these criminal suspects clean and transfer the criminal money, Fan and others acted as reward agents, knowing that the criminal suspect’s funds were illegal gains, they bought the platform account with a large amount of reward money from the criminal suspect’s money at a price ranging from 60% to 70% of the original price, and then sold the platform account at a price ranging from 70% to 8.5% of the original price to earn the difference, covering up and concealing the criminal proceeds for these upstream crimes.

　　On February 8-9 this year, after making a careful arrest plan in advance, with the unified command and deployment of the Ministry of Public Security and the strong cooperation of relevant provincial and municipal public security organs, the Shanghai police launched a centralized network-closing operation in batches in 11 provinces and cities across the country, and arrested 21 suspects including Li and Fan in one fell swoop.

　　According to the relevant laws and regulations of the state, in order to conceal and conceal the income from crimes of disrupting financial management order and financial fraud, and the source and nature of the income generated, those who provide fund accounts or transfer funds through transfer or other payment and settlement methods are suspected of money laundering. Whoever knowingly conceals, transfers, purchases, sells on behalf of others or conceals or conceals the proceeds of crime is suspected of concealing or concealing the crime.

　　At present, with the approval of the procuratorate, four suspects, including Li, have been arrested by the police according to law on suspicion of money laundering, and 17 suspects, including Fan, have been taken criminal compulsory measures according to law on suspicion of concealing and concealing the crime. In the next step, the police will continue to dig deep into upstream crimes and strive to crack down on the whole chain.