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Chinese programmer ordered to pay 1m yuan for using virtual private network
(www.theguardian.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
That kind of punishment is used all the time in the USA. It's criminal and/or civil forfeiture depending on the circumstances. But just as in the case in China it's mostly applied on people who can't fight back. Big mega corporation are mostly safe from it. But occasionally it hits rich people.
Civil forfeiture is even heavily abused in the USA because the police department gets to keep the seized money and the burden of proof is shifted. The person who's assets have been seized needs to provide proof of their innocence.
I've heard of it, but have only ever heard of that being used on people who are carrying straight cash, because only drug dealers do that I guess... /s
Like you said, for white collar crime or corporate , I've never heard of it being used.