Shanxi police dismantled a major "money laundering" criminal gang that used virtual currency to sell stolen goods, with a case flow of 135 million yuan

ChainCatcher news, according to the CCTV News client report, the Taiyuan police in Shanxi province have dismantled a criminal gang that provided "money laundering" services for telecom fraud groups using a large-scale gold trading lead. So far, a total of 15 suspects have been arrested, involving more than 127 telecom network fraud cases across the country, with a total transaction amount of 135 million yuan.

According to investigations, this criminal gang was led by Deng (male, 31 years old, from Hainan). Since early February 2023, they began to undertake "money laundering" operations for overseas telecom fraud and online gambling funds. The gang was divided into groups for receiving funds, scouting, card swiping, transporting gold, currency trading, and selling stolen goods.

After Deng contacted the overseas fraud gang for "money laundering" services, he reached out to "card dealers" to find "card farmers" to receive funds from overseas fraud and online gambling; the scouting group would visit major gold stores to look for those with a large amount of gold in stock; then the card swiping and transporting group would swipe cards to purchase gold together with the card farmers, and afterwards, they would choose relatively hidden public places to hand over the gold to the transporting group; the "gold transporters" would transfer the gold to Shenzhen and hand it over to the "currency traders"; the "currency traders" would sell the stolen goods and convert the proceeds into virtual currency to be handed over to Deng; finally, Deng would transfer the virtual currency to the overseas fraud gang. To evade police crackdown, Deng communicated with overseas contacts and domestic accomplices solely through overseas chat software and used virtual currency for settlements.

The police have frozen and seized involved funds amounting to 3.479 million yuan, confiscated two cars, over 30 mobile phones used in the crimes, 13 SIM cards, and 9 POS machines. Currently, Deng, Xie, Ni, and 10 other suspects have been legally transferred to prosecution for concealing and disguising criminal proceeds and the crime of benefiting from criminal proceeds. Han and Zhang have been transferred to local police in other areas.