Black Humor in Court: A Trial of a Virtual Money Trading Platform

Last night, I had a dream about a court trial, which felt quite interesting, and I couldn't help but want to record it.

Case Background

One day, while a project team from a Virtual Money trading platform was conducting a roadshow in a first-tier city, they were suddenly raided by the police. The entire team was escorted to a detention center in a fifth-tier city.

The reason the platform is accused of being involved in criminal activity is that one of its modules has been identified by local public security as a gambling game using virtual money for betting. However, there is great controversy over whether this module is indeed related to gambling:

The defense argues that whatever amount of Virtual Money the user invests, the platform immediately returns an equivalent amount of coin to the user's account, so there is fundamentally no possibility of loss; how can this be considered gambling?

The prosecution insists that this is a gambling game, arguing that the defendant has already admitted it in the records (reportedly, everyone was subjected to violence during the initial recording).

Due to the huge controversy surrounding the gambling allegations, all defendants refuse to plead guilty. The case has been returned for investigation by the prosecutor's office twice, and there have been two court hearings, with everyone being detained for more than a year. Finally, they awaited the final court hearing of the first instance.

Court Trial Transcript

This is the third court session, and the lawyers found that the prosecutor has a new face.

After the court session began, the prosecutor started reading from the script. The defense attorney asked about the reason for the prosecutor's replacement, and the judge just perfunctorily responded that it was indeed the prosecutor of this court.

During the evidence presentation and cross-examination phase, the prosecutor presented a list of seized RMB assets obtained from the sale of the defendant's Virtual Money. The defense attorney immediately raised an objection, arguing that disposing of the party's Virtual Money without a court ruling is procedurally unlawful. However, the prosecutor had no response to this.

Entering the court debate session, the prosecutor only read the indictment for two minutes before ending their speech. The defense attorney, on the other hand, passionately delivered a lengthy defense statement. However, what was surprising was that during the defense attorney's speech, the presiding judge and other judges were actually chatting and laughing, engaged in light-hearted conversation.

The defense attorney had to politely remind the presiding judge to seriously listen to the defense's opinions, but was met with a cold glance.

After the debate ended, the prosecutor's response regarding whether a new round of defense was needed was extremely brief, and the judge quickly announced the end of the court debate.

Judgment Result

After a long wait, the first-instance verdict has finally arrived. Although the judgment still finds the defendants guilty, all of their sentences are reduced by half or even more compared to the prosecution's demands.

However, a careful reading of the judgment reveals that most of the content is a verbatim copy of the defendant's statements during the police investigation phase. Even more absurdly, the judgment contains the statement "The court believes that the trading platform's provision of Virtual Money perpetual contract trading constitutes illegal financial activity," while in reality, the trading platform in this case does not even have a perpetual contract module.

In addition, the judgment does not mention at all whether the tens of millions of Virtual Money belong to the property involved in the case or how to classify it, only vaguely stating that the funds involved have been "legally processed" by the seizing authority.

Insights on Case Handling

As an experienced criminal defense attorney, I understand that there are no small cases for the parties involved and their families. Criminal charges can bring immense emotional and financial pressure to a family.

Criminal procedural law should be serious and rigorous. Investigative agencies should collect evidence in compliance with regulations and should not have "profit-seeking" motives; the procuratorate should responsibly examine the evidence to ensure that the facts of the case are clear and the evidence is sufficient and conclusive; the court should use the standard of excluding reasonable doubt when adjudicating, and should not easily determine the defendant's guilt for other considerations.

Although lawyers, prosecutors, and judges have different roles in criminal cases, they should all be committed to upholding social fairness and justice, and ensuring the correct implementation of the law. If a party is innocent, their innocence should be restored; if guilty, a fair judgment should still be ensured.

However, the handling process of this case inevitably reminds one of the controversial phrase "The state does not allow mothers to lose", which is truly lamentable.