Paypal's "litigation door": Involving "China's richest man" Mou Zhong, the former COO suspected of occupation?

The legendary richest man Mouzhong platform's Paypal was once a star project in the digital currency field. After the "9.4" announcement last year, Paypal was caught in the doubts and disputes that accompanied the clearance of ICO , and the disturbance has not ceased to this day. Alleging that Mou Zhongzhong's wife and sister violated the right of reputation, the "Second Master Bao" Guo Hongcai of the currency circle violated the personality rights, and the former COO Lu Hongfeng was suspected of embezzlement... Salary Pay Bao, who was struggling in the quagmire of ICO, launched a campaign against many people while responding to external rights protection. A series of indictments.

Posted by Yin Qian, chief editor of Nuclear Finance and Economics

Nuclear Finance APP reported on October 29 Lu Hongfeng's public resume is very beautiful: Tsinghua University undergraduate, Cornell University_ Master span3span, CFA, CFA, University of Chicago MBA, former vice president of Citibank.

Not only that, he also appeared on Zhejiang Satellite TV's popular program "Love Lianliankan" twice, and wrote a song and played the piano to confess to the guest Lin Zhiling, becoming a cross-border celebrity.

Paypal also has a high popularity in the field of digital currency. The platform of the legendary richest man Mouzhong, "the richest man in the currency circle" Li Xiaolai blessing, and even "Bao Er Ye" Guo Hongcai is also involved. Although the parties and Paypal have conflicted and even attacked each other since then, it has at least maintained a lot of attention.

When Lu Hongfeng joined Paypal Company as COO (Chief Operating Officer), both parties had aura. After the reversal, Mi Huijin, the founder of Xinfubao, made a very severe accusation against Lu Hongfeng: embezzling the company's digital currency worth about 700,000 yuan, and may be suspected of criminal responsibility.

Lu Hongfeng joins Paypal

Once intimate,All turned into hatred. Speaking of Lu Hongfeng, Mi Huijin used the word "liar" many times to describe it.

On the afternoon of October 24, 2018, Beijing Yintai Center Starbucks coffee. Mi Huijin, who arrived in a hurry, told "Nuclear Finance and Economics" that he had just returned to Beijing from a business trip and had several meetings. A series of lawsuits against multiple people by Paypal are in progress or in preparation: suing the currency circle celebrity "Bao Er Ye" Guo Hongcai for infringement of personality rights, suing Mouzhong's wife and sister Xia Zongwei for infringement of reputation, suing We-media person Chen Xingyu for defamation Crime... Among them, the most important is to sue Lu Hongfeng, the former COO of the company.

Embezzling the assets of Paypal and using the name of Paypal to issue coins to defraud. In Mi Huijin's mouth, Lu Hongfeng is almost heinous. But just over a year ago, Lu Hongfeng was still a "capable, knowledgeable", "smart and very hard-working" person in his eyes.

Everything starts with Mouzhong.

As China's first generation of private entrepreneurs, the former "China's richest man" Mou Zhonghua is well-known to the outside world for exchanging cans for planes, launching satellites, and developing the border city of Manzhouli. In 1999, Mou Zhong was arrested on his way to work. In 2000, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the "Letter of Credit fraud case" of the Nande Group. Later, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. On September 27, 2016, Mou Zhong was released from prison after serving his sentence.

After being released from prison, Mou Zhongzhong appealed to the Supreme People's Court for a commutation of his acquittal, and at the same time solicited the old ministry to revive the Nande Group. Mou Zhongqi established the "South Germany Resumption Preparatory Group", claiming that it will deploy three world-class projects: promoting China's infrastructure to go abroad, intelligent Internet of Things, and using gene technology to treat cancer.

Mi Huijin said that he was admired by Mou for his work ability and was designated as the project leader of the Internet of Things. In early 2017, Mi Huijin and Lu Hongfeng met at an IoT seminar organized by Mouzhong.

According to Mi Huijin, at that time, Lu Hongfeng failed to invest and start a business, and he was almost desperate. But at the same time, Lu Hongfeng's vision and ability made his heart move, "Maybe he failed to invest because he was not accustomed to returning to China, or because he was not focused?"

After many exchanges, Lu Hongfeng joined Mi Huijin's salary in May 2017 Fubao Company became a partner and served as COO.

According to the industrial and commercial registration data, Beijing Xinfubao Technology Co., Ltd. was established on October 10, 2016 with a registered capital of 1 million yuan. It is located at 406-C079, 4th Floor, Block C, No. 8 Malianwa North Road, Haidian District, Beijing. The scope includes: software development, technology development, technical services, computer system services, basic software services, application software services, market research, business management consulting, data processing (bank card center in data processing, cloud computing with PUE value above 1.5 except data centers).

Xinfubao was originally a limited liability company solely owned by Mi Huijin, but in March 2017 it was changed to "other limited liability company". In June of the same year, Shanghai Xingeya Human Resources Service Co., Ltd. and natural person Pei Lin were added to the investors of Paypal Company, and Mi Huijin was the chairman.

Helping Paypal ICO

According to Mi Huijin's vision, Paypal is a fintech innovation company vertical to the field of corporate payroll, offering payroll and big data management services to the SME market.

Although Mi Huijin said that PayPay itself is a blockchain system platform, it is undeniable that with the joining of Lu Hongfeng, the blockchain concept of PayPay became widely known and embarked on ICO fast lane.

ICO (Initial Coin Offering), that is, initial coin offering, is a financing method for blockchain startups to issue digital cryptocurrency as a project. The first half of 2017 was a period when the concept of blockchain became popular and ICO projects flourished. According to the "Report on the Development of Domestic ICOs in the First Half of 2017" issued by the National Internet Financial Risk Analysis Technology Platform, as of July 18, 2017, there were 43 related platforms providing ICO services in China, with a cumulative investment of 2.616 billion yuan and 10.5 participants. Ten thousand. According to data from the financial technology analysis and research company Autonomous NEXT, the number of domestic participants in ICOs is as high as 2 million.

As a "technical man" as the COO of Paypal, Lu Hongfeng is responsible for both technology and business development.

There is still an article written by "Lu Hongfeng, Chief Operating Officer of Paypal" on the Internet, "What the hell is blockchain salary and benefits? ".In this article published in July 2017, Lu Hongfeng introduced SingPay, an application digital currency issued by SingPay in the field of compensation and welfare, Salary Coin.

The article said that the salary and welfare SAAS (Software as a Service) system integrates the online management of various things in the field of salary payment, including salary distribution, personal tax payment, payment of five insurances and one housing fund, and welfare distribution; salary and welfare BAAS (Blockchain) as a Service) system adds the function of calling blockchain on the basis of SAAS.

"Smart contracts are contracts based on blockchain technology, which are immutable and automatically executed, thus avoiding the problem of default on traditional contracts and the high cost of enforcing contracts after default. In the field of compensation, The principle of smart contracts is applied to labor contracts, and it can also solve labor disputes such as salary arrears, compensation when the contract is terminated, etc." The article reads.

In some promotional materials, the early investors of Xinfubao include both the legendary richest man Mou Zhong and the "richest man in the currency circle" Li Xiaolai. It quickly stood out among numerous ICO projects and became a star.

At 20:00 on August 18, 2017, Paypal launched ICO and issued the token SIP (the abbreviation of SingPay). The announcement shows that the number of ICOs in this round is 300 million, of which 30 million are allocated to early investors and 270 million are used for ICO. The crowdfunding platforms include Coin Exchange and Baseico, and the supported currencies are Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum. Square (ETH), of which 1 BTC is exchanged for 80000SIP and 1 ETH is exchanged for 6300SIP.

On August 20, 2017, the digital currency trading platform Bixue signed an ICO agreement with Paypal.

Mi Huijin said that the ICO of Paypal is very popular. The original deadline was September 17, but the target of 300 million pieces was completed in September, and the financing was about 50 million yuan.

Refund storm

Under the almost crazy situation of ICO,The financing amount of 50 million yuan is not high, but it is enough to excite the Paypal team.

"Salpay is a salary digital payment system built with blockchain technology smart contract protocol, and it is a low-level tool under the bank level"; "Salpay is a system without an information hub and a fund transfer station. , both data and funds are point-to-point flows"; "Salpay is a people-centered, real-name one-stop scene platform, based on openness to create a mobile ecosystem, running through personal financial management, living consumption, office instant messaging and other people real-life scenarios". In one article, PayPay was even called the direction of Mouzhong's comeback.

However, the regulatory sword fell quickly.

September 4, 2017 is an iconic time in the history of blockchain and digital currency development. On the same day, the People's Bank of China and other seven ministries jointly issued the "Announcement on Preventing the Risk of Token Issuance and Financing", which strictly prohibits the issuance and financing of tokens including ICO, and clearly defines ICO as illegal public financing. Token tickets, illegal issuance of securities, illegal fundraising, financial fraud, pyramid schemes and other illegal and criminal activities. "Organizations and individuals that have completed token issuance and financing should make arrangements such as liquidation, reasonably protect the rights and interests of investors, and properly handle risks." . Under the turmoil, various ICO projects have begun to refund coins, and Paypal is no exception.

According to the announcement of Paypal, its ICO withdrawal work started at 8:00 am on September 7th of that year and ended at 8:00 am on October 18th, and 990,372,965 SIP coins had been withdrawn and recovered, accounting for 1 billion total issuance. 99.0373% of the amount.

In fact, the settlement of Paypal Pay has been widely questioned from the very beginning, and the turmoil has not ceased to this day.

After the "September 4th deadline", there were rumors on the Internet that Paypal refused to refund coins and Mi Huijin ran away Singapore . Mou Zhong's wife and sister Xia Zongwei posted a Weibo on September 8, which made the incident even more confusing.

Xia Zongwei's Weibo titled "Friendly Reminder" said: "Recently,I received an inquiry from someone about whether Mr. Mou Zhonghua invested in any so-called Paypal. After verification with Mr. Mou Zhongzhong, Mr. Mou Zhongzhong did not invest in Paypal! ! !

Not only that, Xia Zongwei also stated: "If such forged related information has caused economic losses, it is recommended that you report the case to the relevant judicial organs in time!"

Later, "Second Master Bao" Guo Hongcai was also involved in the turmoil. Guo Hongcai's Weibo on December 27 reposted a screenshot of the chat accusing Xinfubao and Mi Huijin of "subjective inducement or defrauding investors", and commented Dao: "The swindlers of Xianfubao, the founder came to me to invest, claiming that Mouzhong invested in him! As a result, I got to the bottom of it and found that it was pure nonsense!

Mi Huijin told "Nuclear Finance" that he started SalaryPay, and Mou Zhong supported him, and as an early investor, he invested 1 bitcoin symbolically and signed an agreement. He believes that Xia Zongwei's Weibo statement He wanted to put him to death, so he was very angry. In order to reveal the truth, in October 2017, Xu Xu took Xia Zongwei to court on the grounds of infringement of his right of reputation, and the following month applied to add Mou Zhongwei to appear in court as a third person. In the notice of additional indictment , Mi Huijin also mentioned the agreement signed with Mou Zhong.

Mi Huijin also sued Chen Xingyu, a self-media person who "criminalized him" for "defamation". June 29, 2018, Beijing The Shijingshan District Court of the city accepted the case. "Nuclear Finance" contacted Chen Xingyu through WeChat. The latter did not want to say more about his grievances with Mi Huijin, but only warned "don't be fooled." One person is Lu Hongfeng.

Beijing Shijingshan District Court Acceptance Notice.

Defying each other

In order to avoid the "ICO ban", some domestic blockchains represented by trading platforms The project went overseas, and some ICO projects avoided risks by issuing domestic currency and listing overseas.

Xinfubao also thought of this method. The reason Mi Huijin provided to "Nuclear Finance" was that at that time some people were optimistic about salary payment Bao, refused to refund the currency, so they provided investors with three options: direct currency refund, currency conversion to equity, newly issued SIC currency for SIP currency.

Mi Huijin recalled that in early September 2017, after he and Lu Hongfeng discussed setting up a company in Singapore to issue SIC coins, Lu Hongfeng took a computer into the toilet, set up a smart contract in a few minutes, and completed the arrangement of 1 billion SIC coins .

The dispute over SIC coins has continued to this day. In September 2018, there were still people defending their rights online, complaining that Paypal and Mi Huijin refused to refund coins. Mi Huijin said that the vast majority of investors have completed the refund, and the one who posted online was an agent who did not want to spit out the profits from the agency process, so he was unwilling to refund the currency, but "fabricated facts and spread rumors/ "Inciting trouble" attacked Paypal Company.

According to Mi Huijin, all this is related to Lu Hongfeng. The fuse of the "collapse" between the two parties was that he strictly ordered Lu Hongfeng to solve the remaining problems of SIP and SIC. Because when Paypal ICO issued SIP coins and then the Singapore company issued SIC coins, Lu Hongfeng was in charge of all technologies, smart contracts, token issuance and management, and he was also responsible for the subsequent actions such as refunding coins, and he kept the Selfishness makes the situation even more chaotic.

At the beginning of 2018, Mi Huijin issued an "emergency notice" in the circle of friends: "Mr. Lu Hongfeng (English Jason), the former COO of Beijing Xinfubao Technology Co., Ltd., has resigned from Xinfubao in October 2017. After his resignation, he made a fictional statement. The non-existent fake business and foreigner team conducted private fundraising activities, defrauding more than 10 million yuan among the original community investors of Xinfubao. The company and I did not know about it and never provided any help and support. In the beginning of 2018, Mi Huijin posted on WeChat Moments, saying that Lu Hongfeng borrowed the name of Xinpaybao. scam.

On February 20, 2018, Lu Hongfeng posted a Weibo counterattack: "Regarding the recent unprovoked attack by Mi Huijin, the founder of Paypal, I declare and clarify that what Mi is referring to belongs to Bend (Editor's Note: Real In fact, 1. I have never worked in Paypal, and I am not a partner of Mi Huijin / Paypal; I know Mi, only my affiliated asset management company and the software company I invest Paypal provides a small amount of consulting and technical programming consulting.2. It is understood that the ISQ community chain project referred to by Mizuo has no business or investment relationship with Paypal. 3. Mi's other further attacks on me are unsubstantiated. I reserve the right to prosecute the reputation injury caused by Mi according to law (Editor's Note: It is a real right). I will not have any business dealings with Paypal, and please let the public know.

On February 20, 2018, Lu Hongfeng posted a Weibo refutation of Mi Huijin.

However, in addition to the aforementioned articles published by Lu Hongfeng in the name of Paypal COO, there are business cards and other proofs that Lu Hongfeng Hong Feng did act as the COO of Paypal.

The business card of Paypal used by Lu Hongfeng.

A copy of Shanghai Pudong New District Court obtained by Nuclear Finance in September 2018 The judgment issued on the 13th also proves that Lu Hongfeng is a shareholder of Xinfubao. (2018) Hu 0115 Minchu No. 55287 Judgment: On March 15, 2017, Lu Hongfeng signed an equity transfer with Guangzhou Foreign Service Human Resources Service Co., Ltd. An agreement was made to acquire a 10% stake in Shanghai Xingeya Human Resources Service Co., Ltd. at a price of 300,000 yuan and become a director.

Shanghai Xingeya Human Resources Service Co., Ltd. became an investor in Paypay in June 2017.

Shanghai Pudong New Area Court Civil Judgment, proving that Lu Hongfeng is a shareholder of Paypal. Hong Feng tried to illegally occupy the assets of Paypal Company, and joined hands with the person in charge of customer service to control SingWallet, the main token issuer, "snatching and controlling the company's servers, maliciously destroying program codes and maliciously issuing a large number of tokens".

SIC coin issuer is a Singapore company SingWallet PTE. LTD.The registration information shows that the company is wholly-owned by Hong Kong VSQ Technology Co., Ltd., which is called Weishangquan Technology Co., Ltd. in Chinese, with an issued share capital of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars, and its sole director is Lu Hongfeng.

Mi Huijin said that later when checking the SIP issuance and account clearance, he also found that Lu Hongfeng took advantage of the convenience of mastering the authority of token issuance and management, and privately transferred the coins into his personal account, and the bitcoin and ether he would get after buying and selling. Fang and RMB were transferred out, suspected of stealing company property.

The account records of the currency exchange user "Lu Rongshan" show that on September 6, 2017, 5 million SIP coins were recharged, and 10 ETH coins were recharged on September 13, and 3895307.037 SIP coins were transferred to the salary payment company account. After several transactions, 34.965 ETH coins were withdrawn on September 9, 0.012 BTC coins were withdrawn on September 14, and 47.777 ETH coins, 0.037 BTC coins, and 123,558.53 yuan were withdrawn on September 15.

Mi Huijin believes that Lu Hongfeng opened a trading account with his father's name Lu Rongshan, stole 5 million SIP coins, returned 3895307.037 SIP coins, and actually got 1104692.963 SIP coins.

The transaction records of the "Lu Rongshan" account of the currency exchange user provided by the salary payment company.

The account records of the user "Cai Yingfen" on the exchange show that from September 5th to 10th, 2017, a total of 1,625,000 SIP coins were recharged multiple times. After selling, the RMB was withdrawn on September 6th and 9th respectively A total of 189,199 yuan, and 86.76 ETH coins were withdrawn from September 9th to 12th.

There is also a non-real-name account No. 105077, which recharged 50,000 SIP coins on September 8, and transferred RMB 8751.709 on September 9 after selling.

The transaction record of account No. 105077 provided by Paypal Company.

Mi Huijin said that these two accounts were also controlled by Lu Hongfeng, and the money for stealing and selling SIP coins was taken away by him.According to incomplete statistics from Paypal, for these three accounts alone, Lu Hongfeng stole a total of 2,839,692.97 SIP coins from the company, which was worth about 700,000 yuan at the time, which "completely constituted the crime of embezzlement."

It should be noted that the above account records are unilaterally provided by Paypal, and Nuclear Finance has not been able to confirm it from the currency exchange or other channels.

On October 23, 2018, a reporter from "Nuclear Finance and Economics" called Lu Hongfeng and asked him to respond to the allegations made by Paypal. Lu Hongfeng called Mi Huijin complete nonsense, but declined to be interviewed on specific issues.

The surging ICOs have pushed blockchain and digital currencies to the general public. The "September 4th deadline" in 2017 did not completely eradicate ICOs. After a brief panic, the blockchain craze soon made a comeback. Various types of domestic digital currencies emerge in an endless stream, and continue to weave the myth of attracting gold and making wealth; in the Spring Festival of 2018, the group "Sleepless at three o'clock" was born, marking the new peak of the blockchain fever. Industry leaders, famous investors, and entertainment stars , exciting words are stirred every day, guiding and attracting more people to join the blockchain wave.

The former star project, Paypal, is still struggling in the shadow of ICO failure. Mi Huijin said that he had entrusted a lawyer to report to the public security organ about Lu Hongfeng's alleged criminal offense, and hoped that the public power would intervene and get to the bottom of the matter.