Some family members of the victim made suggestions based on their own feelings:
Feng "My daughter was scammed 3000 RMB, but the scammer is nowhere to be found. Scammers should go on death sentence".
There are suggestions from the perspective of children's growth:
Zhu: This is a serious question, how is the child going to grow up after being scammed? No matter how many scammers we capture, there are still a lot of scammers scamming people. Why is such crime not a death penalty? Can such laws be changed?
There are suggestions from the perspective of analyzing the reasons for the rampant fraud:
Xiao Dong: After the amendments in law jurification, the statutory criminal offence are now changed from death penalty to life sentencing.
There are also legislative details directly given, although not so humane and scientific:
Sun: Harsher punishment to the scammers such as
First time scam: To chop off one hand of the scammer;
Second time scam: Death penalty
Regardless of the scam amount scammed, scammer's entire family properties should be confiscated to compensate for the victim's loss.
There are 37 pages and more than 800 suggestions containing only "the highest sentence of death penalty for telecommunications fraud" in the suggestions comments section. There are countless of other messages suggesting to increase penalties for telecommunications fraud.
What is the sentencing like for scammers in the telecommunications crime? What is the difference between other crimes such as robbery, theft on similar capacity compared?
Researched
Due to the huge number of documents uploaded by courts across the country every day, in order to make the results more authoritative and reducing the workload, In terms of date, choose January 1st-March 1st, 2021, which is the first two of this year. Month, choose "Judgment" for the document type, and choose "Intermediate Court" for the court level.
Why choose the "intermediate court", because the first instance of crimes such as robbery, robbery and fraud are generally in the basic courts, and my country currently implements the "two-instance final-instance system." If there is a conviction and sentence that is not allowed, it will definitely be corrected.
Lets look at robbery sentence
Since the start of this year, there are a total of 33 robbery judgments uploaded by the intermediate people’s courts across the country. Excluding the judgments that are not suitable to be made public and changing the sentence, a total of 12 can be seen from the case and the sentence results. The judgment can also show that the country’s social security It's getting better and better, and the rate of robbery crimes is getting lower and lower.
According to Article 263 of the Criminal Law, anyone who robs public or private property by violence, coercion or other methods shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years, but not more than 10 years and a fine; Death penalty and fines or confiscation of property.
Therefore, the sentence for robbery is 3 years. In other words, even if you robbed 1 yuan, or even committed the robbery, but did not steal the money, you must be sentenced to at least 3 years. Judging from the judgment results of the 12 cases above, this is also confirmed. For example, on the 8th row, "Wang Weichang Robbery", the criminal originally wanted to steal a motorcycle, but when he was discovered, he then turned to violence. Although he did not steal the motorcycle, he was sentenced to 3 years and 5 months.
And the most representative of these 12 cases is the first row of the table above : "Robbery of Han Yuefeng and Yuan Xiaokang." These two criminals prepared tools such as imitation pistol lighters, fruit knives, gloves, etc., to premeditate the robbery. Caught without implementation. Even so, the court sentenced both of them (both with a record of robbery and theft) between 3 and 3 and a half years in prison.
Now, lets look at theft:
With reference to the aforementioned search conditions, a total of 35 judgments were searched. Excluding the judgments that are not suitable for publication and changing the sentence, a total of 25 cases can be seen from the plots and sentence results. Theft case had been the criminal case with the highest number of cases before last year, and it was also reflected in the final judgment.
According to Article 264 of the Criminal Law, anyone who steals public or private property in a relatively large amount, or multiple thefts, burglaries, thefts with weapons, or pickpockets shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention or surveillance, and shall be punished concurrently or alone. Fines; if the amount is huge or there are other serious circumstances, they shall be sentenced to three to ten years imprisonment and a fine; if the amount is particularly huge or there are other particularly serious circumstances, they shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than 10 years or life imprisonment and a fine Or confiscate property.
The punishment for the crime of theft is relatively broad, with a low penalty, control, and criminal detention, and a direct sentence of life imprisonment for the worst. Therefore, we can see from the 25 verdicts in the first two months of the intermediary courts in various regions that the length and severity of sentences vary. If you are interested, you can carefully study the chart above.
Let's talk about the first case "Wang Yonglin and Liu Chunhua theft".
Let’s take a look at the verdict’s statement on the determination of the fact that the two have committed crimes:
The Fengcheng People’s Court found that on November 13, 2019, the defendant Liu Chunhua found the defendant Wang Yonglin to help catch toads in the fifteenth group of Xiejia Village, Xiejia Village, Fengcheng City, who knew the toads in the hetao. Under the condition that Tao Shuren and Sheng Licheng were contracted and operated, they still used water pumps, electric fish and electric fish to catch more than 20 kilograms of toads in the toad bubble. The next day, after the defendant Wang Yonglin contacted to acquire the toad man, the two jointly sold 18.8 kilograms of the female toad, and received a stolen money of RMB 1,880. The remaining toads were eaten by the two of them. After identification, the toads stolen by the defendants Liu Chunhua and Wang Yonglin were worth RMB 2,612.
To put it in simple words, Wang and Liu went to a pond contracted by others to catch more than 20 catties of toads. The next day they sold 18.8 catties of female toads at a price of 100 yuan per catty for 1880 yuan (are toads so expensive? It may be a special species), the remaining male toad ate it. Although the two compensated the victim for economic losses of 7,000 yuan, Wang was finally sentenced to 7 months in prison (11 months in the first instance) and Liu was sentenced to 6 months suspended for 1 year.
Don't think that stealing a toad is a heavy sentence. Look at the other verdicts, it's the same. The second "Liu Hegen theft", stealing a piece of underwear, was detained for 3 months, and was fined 1,500 yuan; the third "Shen Zheng theft", a criminal with a prior conviction for stealing an electric car worth more than 1,000 yuan , Was sentenced to 7 months in prison and a fine of 2500 yuan.
From the previous analysis, it can be seen that whether it is robbery or theft, no matter where the court is, the sentence is more severe. What about telecommunication fraud?
We found a total of 8 judgments relating to telecommunications fraud. Are there fewer cases of telecommunications fraud? No. Last year, the number of fraud cases in the country exceeded the number of theft cases. It is said that there should be a lot of judgments in fraud cases, but the detection rate is relatively low, so the search results are relatively small. Eight copies are not enough to explain the situation. Finally 12 was found after intense research:-
Did you know that the telecommunications fraud is so rampant, the Criminal Law does not specifically categorised the crime of telecommunications as fraud, only fraud.
According to Article 266 of the Criminal Law, those who defraud public and private property with a relatively large amount shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention or surveillance, and a fine or a fine; if the amount is large or there are other serious circumstances, the punishment shall be more than three years A fixed-term imprisonment of not more than ten years and a fine; if the amount is particularly large or there are other particularly serious circumstances, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of more than ten years or life imprisonment, and a fine or confiscation of property.
In other words, the penalty for the crime of fraud is similar to that of theft, with the minimum being a fine or control or criminal detention, and the maximum being life imprisonment. However, judging from the above 12 cases, there have been very few severe sentences.
The heaviest sentence was listed on the second row, "Meng Fanjian and Ma Guofeng fraud case". They developed two loan apps to implement loan fraud, defrauding a total of more than 8.9 million yuan, but in the end the main culprit Meng Fanjian was only sentenced for 14 and a half years. More than 8.9 million means that about 400 people have been deceived.
Someone may ask, why did the court not issue a heavy sentence? In fact, insiders know that although 8.9 million fraud flows can be found on the books of the scammers, the court’s decision depends on the complete chain of evidence. In other words, if the more than 400 victims cannot be found and confirmed one by one, the court will not charge the scammer.
Among the 12 judgments, there were three cases of fraud in foreign countries, which were carried out in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, but they were eventually arrested.
The most worth mentioning is the one listed on third row crime of "Li Wenchao and Wang Sanzhong's fraud." These people engaged in a "Pig Slaughter Scam" fraud in Cambodia to induce the victim to invest in the "58 Welfare Lottery" platform. The victim committed suicide after investing 925,000 yuan in the three months from September to December 2018 when he was scammed. After these three returned to China and surrendered, the court finally ruled Li Wenchao and Li Zejun for 6 years and 5 months, and Wang Sanzhong and Kang Jufeng for 3 years and 5 months to 3 years and 9 months.
Someone might ask, why did the victim commit suicide by defrauding so much money, but the sentence was so light? Based on the actual combat experience, the court should also want to make a heavy sentence, but the evidence it has was very limited. We can find the clue from a paragraph in the judgment.
A glance at the above paragraph is very puzzling. The first sentence is that the victim was defrauded of 925,000. The following statement refers to the amount of crime committed by the four criminals while working in Cambodia. It can be seen that these people have different working hours, but the amount of fraud is. Both are 925,000.
It is impossible for a scammer to defraud only one person in a foreign country in a few months. In the absence of other evidence of overseas fraud dens, even if these scammers admitted that they had defrauded others, the court would not determine As for the crime facts, in the end, the only choice can be a crime that can form a chain of evidence-the case of being deceived of 925,000 yuan.
There are several other cases. for example, in the fifth row of thecase, the fraud limit of millions of dollars was sentenced to a maximum of 10 years; in the seventh case, the criminals defrauded 125,000 times eight times, and finally received a suspended sentence.
Reflection
By now, everyone should have a common feeling, that is, compared to robbery and theft, which are also crimes of property infringement, the sentence for the crime of fraud is indeed too low. Even for fraud that caused suicide, the sentence was heinously light.
What is the cause of this phenomenon?
The legislation is lagging behind.
Telecommuncations fraud cases have become the highest case in the country, but there is no special "telecommunications fraud crime" in the Criminal Law. In many cases, only crimes such as fraud and trust assistance can be used. When encountering new methods, they may not be charged with these crimes.
When the Criminal Law established the crime of fraud, there was no criminal method of telecommunications fraud. At that time, it was mainly contact fraud, and the harm was very limited. But now, there are a variety of electronic fraud methods, which can not only deceive your property, but also all your future overdraft properties (such as letting you take a loan, mortgage your real estate, etc.).
More importantly, telecommunications fraud can bring great trauma to the victim's soul. Many people lose confidence in life after being deceived, or even commit suicide, and their life trajectory changes. From this perspective, its harm is far greater than theft and robbery.
The judicial dilemma.
Telecom fraud is a high-tech crime, and most of the fraud dens are overseas. Due to limited conditions, it is impossible to fix all the evidence chains like robbery and theft. Although the public security do their utmost to arrest people and solve cases, as far as the procuratorate and court are concerned, the first consideration for their conviction and sentencing is the integrity of the evidence chain.
For example, although the scammer had defrauded 10 million on his account, he also admitted that he cannot be sentenced at 10 million. All the victims and other evidence must be found. For the ever-changing telecommunications fraud, this is nothing short of a fantasy.
At present, the country is comprehensively cracking down on telecommunication network fraud, but it is still very difficult to reverse the high incidence in the short term. Anti-fraud is a protracted battle. Under the situation that the crackdown, prevention, governance and other work have been basically achieved to the extreme, it is time to consider the suggestions of the people at the beginning of the article, and think about increasing the punishment of scammers from the legislative and judicial perspectives.
After all, the rule of law is irreplaceable for its fundamental, anticipatory, and long-term benefits.