Odaily Planet Daily News: In a case of illegal absorption of public deposits through virtual currency heard by the People's Court of Qujiang District, Shaoguan City, Guangdong Province, a man named Deng developed 400 investment members from Shaoguan to the whole country by inducing them to buy virtual currency that he claimed was "risk-free and high-yield" and "capital-guaranteed and high-profit", and illegally absorbed more than 5 million yuan in investment funds. In early 2019, Deng cooperated with a Korean company to introduce MZC virtual currency investment and traded through the online investment platform FCOIN, developing Shaoguan relatives and friends and unspecified personnel into members, and then developed more members in Shenzhen, Changsha and other places by creating a national member exchange WeChat group, on-site explanations, conference promotion, etc., and induced members to buy MZC virtual currency by promoting the "high yield" and "high value" of MZC virtual currency. In order to induce more members to buy MZC virtual currency, Deng launched an online grab order activity, claiming "risk-free and high yield" to increase the value of MZC virtual currency and attract members to buy. Soon after, Deng launched a "binary coin lock-up activity" to members, claiming to guarantee principal and high returns, in order to induce more members to invest in the purchase of MZC virtual currency in a principal-guaranteed model. At the end of 2019, the capital chain of MZC virtual currency broke, and the FCOIN trading platform was closed soon after. Many fund-raising participants were unable to withdraw the purchased virtual currency. Deng withdrew the private placement funds and part of the losses totaling more than 2 million yuan according to the market price of MZC currency. In May 2020, the fund-raising participants chose to report the case. After the case was prosecuted, the Qujiang Court held that Deng illegally absorbed public deposits and disrupted the financial order. His behavior constituted the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits, which was a huge amount. It was found that 54 fund-raising participants had reported the case, and there were 346 accounts of fund-raising participants who had not reported the case. The illegal absorption of deposits totaled more than 5 million yuan, causing direct economic losses of more than 2 million yuan to the fund-raising participants. During the trial, Deng's family returned 200,000 yuan of illegal income to the court and reimbursed more than 2 million yuan to the fund-raising participants. The Qujiang Court sentenced Deng to three years and six months in prison, a fine of 100,000 yuan, and ordered him to repay the remaining unpaid fund-raising funds. (Qujiang Rong Media)