Case Study: Baidu Engineer Convicted for Unauthorized System Manipulation and Financial Fraud

Recently, China’s court documents revealed a case in which a Baidu engineer illegally controlled computer information systems to facilitate gambling websites, causing losses of 3.74 million yuan.

The engineer, Chen, born in 1992, abused his position at Baidu Times Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. by exceeding his authority, modifying data and writing scripts to illegally submit 735 media site accounts to the Baidu Union, damaging the company’s advertising revenue.

From September 2017 to March 2018, Chen accepted 235,935.4 yuan for reviewing each site at a price of 300 yuan, effectively selling “quick audits.”

Chen’s official role was in the display advertising platform’s Union team, responsible for developing and maintaining traffic‑end systems, not for media qualification reviews.

In August 2017, a person named Liu approached Chen offering “side work” to quickly approve sites. After initially refusing, Liu later met Chen in Beijing, offering 9,000 yuan for Chen to approve 30 sites at 300 yuan each, which Chen accepted.

Normally, Baidu’s site review process involves automated filtering followed by manual review by authorized staff; only sites passing both stages can be listed and share ad revenue.

Chen, however, used a CURL command and custom scripts to call the media‑review API, altering the status of unapproved sites to “approved,” including sites involved in gambling and lottery activities.

Investigation in February 2018 found 735 sites marked as approved in the UNION platform but not in the risk‑control platform, indicating unauthorized API calls.

The investigation concluded that Chen’s actions, performed without authorization and for personal gain, constituted illegal modification of computer information system data, meeting the legal definition of destroying a computer information system.

Chen voluntarily surrendered, confessed, returned all illegal gains, and compensated the company’s IT service costs, leading the court to reduce his sentence.

The Haidian District People’s Court sentenced Chen to one year and nine months in prison and confiscated all illegal proceeds.