Driving home a final nail in the Skycoin kidnapping FUD coffin — The court papers.

One of the most often repeated FUD stories pertaining to Skycoin is the so-called fake kidnapping that took place in 2018. Fudders spread a rumour that the event was fabricated by the Skycoin team as a pretext for dumping a large number of coins on the Binance crypto exchange. Set against the backdrop of all the other FUD, much of which was paid for by rival coins this story was spread far and wide and one still occasionally encounters it in forums or chat groups. May this piece then serve to help put this lie to rest once and for all.

The events leading up the conviction of the criminals by the People’s Court, Jing’an District, Shang Hai are, to the best of my knowledge, as follows;

In a nutshell, Chinese marketing company, Evolab was employed by Skycoin to market the project in China and to build a Chinese userbase and community. Over time, Evolab became an intrinsic part of the Skycoin team and as such certain business processes were absorbed by them to varying degrees. The movement of a fair amount of coins designated as developer bonuses as well as sales to investors was entrusted to Evolab. When developers complained to senior staff that they didn’t receive their bonuses, a forensic audit was called for by members of management who suspected foul play on behalf of Evolabs staff. This caused certain members of the Evolab team to panic and on the evening of June 12, 2018 members of the Evolab team entered the home of Skycoin’s lead developer, Synth, and his girlfriend Li Shenyang where they threatened them, assaulted them and forced them to hand over 18.88 Bitcoin as well as 6600 Skycoin from Synth’s personal account to the attackers. This is in addition to several hundred thousand Skycoin that was at that time locked down due to disputes about rightful ownership and that was released to the attackers who eventually left the apartment at 3 AM. This version of events is corroborated by the court papers.

The incident was reported to the American embassy as well as to the Chinese police who opened a docket and subsequently arrested three of the perpetrators namely; Yan Xingdon, Sam Sing Fong, and Sun Fei on June 20. A fourth, Li Min, handed herself over to the police. Due to the serious nature of the charges, all the perpetrators remained in custody until the 30'th of November 2018 when they appeared in court and their trial commenced. By then, the attackers had already dumped large amounts of Skycoin on Binance.

According to the court papers, none of the accused contested the charges levelled against them and instead pleaded guilty in the hope of receiving a more lenient sentence. This is a highly pertinent point. Not one of the perpetrators contested the facts as it was put before the court. They did not at any time even attempt to dispute the version of events put forth by the witnesses and victims statements. If, as certain fudders are alleging, the event was fabricated then surely the victims of such a fabrication would at least attempt to defend themselves and put forth their version of events. If it was a fabricated event then surely they would have been able to submit evidence in support of their story. Instead, they unanimously accepted the charges and in so doing, confirmed Synth and Li’s story.

The court considered all the evidence and found all four defendants guilty of illegally detaining and assaulting Synth and his girlfriend based on the facts of the matter. They were sentenced to between 7 and 8 months imprisonment each. The time spent in detention while awaiting trial was to be deducted from their sentences.

So there we have it. A court of law examined the case and found the event to be true as told by the victims. Members of the Evolab team assaulted and detained Synth, stole coins and went to prison for their crimes. The proof is available for anyone to examine for themselves in the form of a public court record that can be obtained from the court archives but in case you want to examine them and don’t feel like taking a trip to China, a copy can be viewed here.
Following the tsunami of FUD that was unleashed on Skycoin, community members took it upon themselves to lay the facts of this and other FUD stories bare for examination by the public at large. A website was specifically createdfor this purpose and it is well worth a visit by anybody researching Skycoin.