[An Employee in Shenzhen Pretends to Be a 'Foreign Hacker' to Extort Bitcoin and USDT, Sentenced to Prison; Virtual Currency Involved Valued at Over 630,000 Yuan] BlockBeats News, August 6: An employee of a company in Shenzhen's Pingshan District, burdened by online loan debts, stole the company's core R&D data and disguised himself as a foreign hacker to send extortion emails to the company. He demanded 0.88 Bitcoin, 0.8 Bitcoin, and 90,000 USDT as 'ransom' in succession. According to the *Procuratorial Daily*, the suspect, Jia, exploited management loopholes in the company to download a large amount of R&D data from the company's server and copied the files to his personal phone. He then used overseas email accounts and other channels to create the illusion of a 'hacker intrusion,' pressuring the company by claiming that leaking the data would cause significant losses. Since the company did not pay the ransom and reported the incident to the police, Jia was ultimately convicted of attempted extortion and sentenced by the court to 3 years and 3 months in prison, along with a fine of 10,000 yuan. During the trial, the prosecution determined that although Bitcoin and Tether (USDT) are not legal tender, they are virtual assets with property value. The virtual currency involved in the case, valued at over 630,000 yuan, was used as the basis for determining the amount involved in the crime. [Original Link]