How shocking it would not seem, an engineer based in Beijing used the unpleasant situation in which his own company suffered a failed attack and managed to stole an impressive amount of BTC.

Zhong Mo was found guilty for stealing 100 BTC

A Chinese engineer was found guilty of stealing 100 Bitcoin from his own company. Even if he returned in a proportion of 90% of the stolen crypto assets, he still can be sentenced to jail for 7 years.

The engineer is an employee named Zhong Mo. The local police confirmed the engineer’s arrest for the illegal use of the database information. He was arrested in the Haidian area, which is famous for the large number of universities, but also for Zhongguancun electronics district, where many Chinese tech companies are located. In other words, this area is called “China’s Silicon Valley“.

The prosecutors of the Science and Technology Criminal Investigation Department of Haidian have identified that the accused was part of a tech and maintenance department in a technology company.

Following investigations, the prosecutor has identified that the engineer had decided to steal 100 BTC after he found an unsuccessful attack. During his work program, Zhong Mo was the person who came across official information about a crypto attack and the one who solved the incident. Using this circumstance, he succeeded to extract Bitcoins using the administrator’s data in order to connect to the database. Even if the accused tried to eliminate any trace that could lead to him, he was found guilty.

Only 90 BTC were returned

The engineer returned 90 BTC to the company, the remaining 10 BTC being lost through a scam. According to the exchange rate at that time, September 2017, the engineer could gain for 100 BTC – $ 380,000.

This is the first case of this kind investigated by the Beijing police. According to China’s Criminal Law, if a person violates the law in force regarding private digitally stored information is charged with imprisonment for up to 3 years, but if circumstances are found to be more complicated, the person may be accused with jail for up to 7 years.

This is not the first theft of this kind in China. By the beginning of 2017, a Chinese programmer had managed to steal $ 3 million worth in Bitcoin from his own company.

What’s your opinion: What should companies do to avoid such incidents?