Wang Jinwei, Henan Jinboda Law Firm, answered: In civil activities, one party intentionally conceals the facts, causing the other party to misunderstand, thus damaging its interests and profiting from it, which belongs to civil fraud. Fraud is an act in which the perpetrator fabricates facts, conceals the truth and defrauds public and private property for the purpose of illegal possession. If the amount is large, it constitutes a crime of fraud. Although they are similar in objective performance, there are still obvious differences in their constituent elements.
(1) Subjective aspect: The subjective purpose of civil fraudsters is to make the victims have a wrong understanding, do behaviors that are unfavorable to them and beneficial to fraudsters, and seek illegal benefits through the legal form of "fulfilling obligations". Its essence is "illegal profit", and subjective intention is indirect. On the other hand, fraud is different. Subjectively, the actor has no motivation to undertake obligations at all, but only attempts to fabricate facts to confuse the victim into being deceived, hand over property and illegally possess it. Its subjective intention is direct.
(2) Objectively speaking, in order to escape legal sanctions, criminal fraudsters often use fake identities, fake documents or even fake names and addresses, so as to avoid being investigated by law after they succeed. On the other hand, civil fraudsters do not need to forge identities, fictitious addresses, forged documents, etc. , and generally have legal civil subject qualification.
(3) In terms of content, the perpetrators of criminal fraud are completely fictional facts, out of nothing, and simply do not have the ability and conditions to perform their obligations. The fraudster exaggerates and magnifies on the basis of certain facts, some of which are untrue and have certain ability and conditions to undertake obligations, that is to say, there are legal civil contents in his behavior.
(4) From the consequences, criminal fraudsters often defraud huge amounts of property for illegal possession, which seriously disrupts China's reform, opening up and market economic order. Article 266 of China's Criminal Law stipulates: "Whoever defrauds public or private property in a relatively large amount shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention or public surveillance, and shall also or only be fined; If the amount is huge or there are other serious circumstances, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years and shall also be fined; If the amount is especially huge or there are other particularly serious circumstances, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than 10 years or life imprisonment, and shall also be fined or confiscated. " Although fraud is also illegal, its severity is still within the scope of civil violations. With regard to civil fraud, Article 58 of the General Principles of the Civil Law of China stipulates: "A civil act committed by one party in violation of its true meaning by means of fraud or coercion or by taking advantage of the danger of others is invalid." For invalid civil acts, the law stipulates that both parties should return the property, and the fraudster should compensate the other party for the losses.