On September 14, according to the public account of the Beijing Higher People's Court, Zhang, a blockchain engineer at a certain internet company, learned that there was a large amount of Ethereum in the project account during his participation in the company's development of a project. He had evil intentions and wanted to attack the company's account to obtain Ethereum. Using his work as an excuse for "code learning," he asked his colleagues for program code and private keys beyond his work authorization.

According to Zhang, he had joined a "technical exchange group" where members could obtain virtual currency through code cracking for profit. He shared the code and private key with the group and invited Jack, a member of the group, to crack the code and attack the company's account, obtaining 106.15 Ethereum. Zhang said that he "laundered" the obtained Ethereum and planned to distribute it later when the price increased. He converted the Ethereum into other forms of currency, transferred it through multiple accounts including his wife's, and then transferred it back to his own account. After the company discovered that the virtual currency in the account had been stolen, it immediately reported it to the police. After the procuratorate filed a public prosecution, the Changping Court formed a collegial panel and held a public trial of the case.

After hearing the evidence, including the transfer of the Ethereum involved, the information on Ethereum code addresses and corresponding private keys extracted from Zhang's computer, and the chat records between Zhang and his wife that included "money laundering" and related witness testimony, the Changping Court determined that defendant Zhang violated regulations, requested program code and private keys from others, illegally obtained Ethereum information from the company's computer system, and traded some of the Ethereum for profit. In the end, the court found defendant Zhang guilty of the crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data and sentenced him to three years and six months in prison and a fine of 60,000 yuan. At the same time, the court confiscated Zhang's illegal gains of 38,329.76 yuan. After the first-instance judgment, defendant Zhang appealed. The second-instance ruling dismissed the appeal and upheld the original judgment. The case is now effective.