A COLLEGE student who worked for an illegal e-commerce company in Shenzhen without knowledge regained her freedom after the local procuratorate reviewed the detention penalty against her last year.

The case was among 100 cases that the Supreme People’s Procuratorate has singled out as examples of reviewing detention penalty against those who had been unwittingly involved in crime and withdrawing or mitigating detention decisions, sznews.com reported.

Shenzhen’s procuratorate departments were awarded for their efforts in reassessing two cases regarding college graduates falling for career traps.

One of the students, surnamed Hu, was a senior in a university when she started looking for a job. Through a legal job-seeking website, Hu found a position at the e-commerce company.

Hu started to work for the company while still preparing her graduation thesis. Her duty was to solicit customers to engage in futures trading for the company through social media platforms.

Hu was asked to help customers of the company top up their accounts on an online platform and trade virtual agricultural products.

She realized something was wrong as her employer would ask her to pretend to be a customer and lie to the other customers about earning large profits.

Hu wanted to quit the job, but the company threatened to withhold three months of back pay, which amounted to more than 9,000 yuan (US$1,426).

The e-commerce company was soon investigated and all directors, managers and other employees were detained for allegedly running a gambling den.

A police investigation showed the company’s stakeholders were using the platform to organize gambling. Gross-roots staff members like Hu were soliciting customers to put money on the platform and make bets by purchasing futures.

Feeling it was wrong, Hu and her family applied for a review of her detention penalty with the help of a lawyer with the Longgang People’s Procuratorate.

The procurators contacted Hu’s university to confirm her enrollment at the university and learned she was graduating. Considering Hu’s future and the mild circumstances of her crime, the procuratorate granted Hu a guarantor pending trial.

According to the procuratorate, Hu’s case is not rare nationwide, as some illicit companies take advantage of graduating students’ eagerness to find jobs and use them to commit crimes. (Zhang Qian)