Recently, the event that a college student Liu in Zibo of Shandong province earn money by copying meal card, was published on weibo. Liu spent 1500 yuan in buying the equipment of copying meal card on the Internet, and learnt to copy meal card eventually after many failures. Since the end of 2018, he has copied the meal cards of more than a dozen schools in Shandong province and sold high-value fake meal cards to others at a low price and even developed others to join him for profit. Within two months, Liu sold more than 3,000 fake meal cards and made a profit of 100,000 yuan. At present, Liu has been under criminal detention.

The netizens ridiculed him: it would be better if he can use the ability in the right way. Even some netizens sighed with emotion: all the ways to earn money are really from the criminal law. So, in this case, what shall Liu be charged because of copying meal cards and selling for profit?

Article 227 of the criminal law stipulates that the crime of forging or reselling a forged valuable ticket means forging or reselling a forged ticket, ship ticket, postage stamp or aother valuable ticket, which reaches the legal amount standard. The following figure can be obtained by searching on the Chinese Judicial Documents website with the keyword ‘copying meal card’. The judgement of the crime of copying meal card and selling it for profit is different in different courts at present. The grass-routs court found the defendant guilty of forging and reselling forged valuable tickets, while the intermediate court found the defendant guilty of fraud. Therefore, the charge of this case is controversial, and netizens also argued it on weibo.

In the fraud case of Li Zonghong and Yang Changhong (Case No. : (2017) Chuan 01 criminal case final judgement No. 644), the intermediate people’s court of Chengdu has decided that it is a crime of fraud and the reasons are as follows:

The valuable ticket stipulated by the criminal law should have the publicity of issuing object, and its space of issuing and object should not be specific. School meal card, served as the purchase evidence that sells in school and is aimed at the students, does not belong to the valuable ticket of criminal law.

The defendants of first trial, Li Zonghong and Yang Changhong, for the purpose of illegal possession, obtain the fake school meal card by copying, and sell to another student. After purchasing the fake meal cards, another student pay with the fake meal cards in the school canteen or retail section, making the staff of card point-of-sale misunderstand and delivere the goods to the students who pay with copy cards. The two defendants of first trial, Li Zonghong and Yang Changhong, constitute crime of fraud, and the amount meets statutory standard. The court shall support the counterappeal of the procuratorate.

In the case of Liang Qinghuan and Du Chunxi forging and reselling forged valuable tickets (Case No. : (2018) Lu 1327 criminal case first trial 38), the people’s court of Junan county determined that they are guilty of forging and reselling forged valuable tickets. The court held that the defendant, Liang Qinghuan forging valuable tickets, constitutes the crime of forgery of valuable tickets. The defendant Du Chunxi resold forged valuable tickets, which constituted the crime of reselling forged valuable tickets. The facts and charges charged by the procuratorate are both established.

So is the student who bought the fake meal card suspected of committing a crime? What is the charge?

According to the published judgments, the courts did not mention whether the student who bought the fake meal card committed a crime. A post on weibo is concerned with this question, and the students of law major commented on it:

Liu’s specific charges shall be declared after a period of time. So what do you think of this case?