On January 20th, PANews reported that, according to The Paper, police in Zhangjiajie City, Hunan Province, and Changge City, Henan Province, have both opened investigations into Li Dong (pseudonym), an IT professional from Shenzhen, on suspicion of "operating a casino." Zhangjiajie police seized 103 Bitcoins from Li Dong's account, which were converted into RMB 49.61 million; Henan police seized 80 Bitcoins, valued at over RMB 40 million. Later, Li Dong was not convicted of "operating a casino," but was prosecuted by the Changge City Procuratorate in Henan Province for suspected theft and infringement of citizens' personal information. In January 2026, the case was publicly heard in the Changge City Court. After a recess, the court stated that it would reconvene at a later date.

According to the prosecution, in 2020, Li Dong exploited a program vulnerability in the server of the overseas online gambling website "Kaiyun Sports" to steal the personal information of over 1.84 million Chinese citizens, including individuals from Xuchang and Changge. In addition to the aforementioned charges of infringing on citizens' personal information, the prosecution also believes that Li Dong stole funds from the gambling website, constituting theft. According to the indictment, in 2020, Li Dong selected agent accounts with high commission rates and numerous downlines from the "Kaiyun Sports" gambling website's agent accounts, replacing the commission bank accounts of these agent accounts with bank accounts under his control, stealing a total of over 35.5 million yuan in agent commission funds from the "Kaiyun Sports" gambling website. Of this, over 6.44 million yuan was transferred to 13 bank cards purchased by Li Dong; the remaining 29.05 million yuan was used by a certain group to purchase cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and transferred to Li Dong's wallet.