ChainCatcher news, on October 25, the Ministry of Public Security held a special press conference in Beijing to report on the effectiveness of the measures taken by the national public security organs to combat and rectify ethnic asset unfreezing fraud crimes.Zhou Qiancheng, head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Ningbo Public Security Bureau in Zhejiang Province, introduced that at the beginning of this year, Ningbo public security organs discovered that local residents were participating in the "China International Plum Blossom Association" ethnic asset unfreezing fraud project. Upon investigation, it was found that the suspects established an illegal organization called "China International Plum Blossom Association" as bait with high pension returns, recruiting participants from all over the country, and collecting fees under the names of "membership fees," "venue fees," "certificate fees," and "personal income tax," using virtual currency to launder money and illegally profit. The involved funds have been confirmed to exceed 58 million yuan.Currently, the case is still under further investigation.

ChainCatcher news: Ms. Zhang from Tianjin was scammed out of over 260,000 yuan this month, with the fraudulently obtained money withdrawn in Xingguo County. The Xingguo police acted quickly, arresting 8 criminal suspects and dismantling a virtual currency money laundering "water room" operation, seizing 200,000 yuan in related funds.It is reported that the suspect Li Mouyuan provided bank accounts to the money laundering gang to assist in their laundering activities and withdrew over 260,000 yuan while knowing that the funds were involved in online illegal activities. After receiving the cash withdrawn by Li Mouyuan, the money laundering gang fled back to Yuzhou, Henan, and handed the involved funds to the virtual currency money laundering "water room" suspect Hou Moupeng. Hou Moupeng then exchanged the over 260,000 yuan in cash obtained from the fraud into virtual currency U offline, transferring it to a designated virtual currency address, ultimately achieving the laundering and whitening of the involved funds.The police successfully dismantled the money laundering den, arrested multiple suspects, and recovered part of the involved funds.

ChainCatcher news, according to East Net reports, Hong Kong law enforcement agencies launched anti-money laundering operations codenamed "Micro Song," "Black Brain," and "Ghost Hero" this month based on tips and analysis, dismantling three money laundering groups and arresting 27 people, with a total amount involved exceeding 300 million Hong Kong dollars.Investigating officers stated that in March this year, Hong Kong law enforcement received a request for investigation from Singapore authorities, indicating that over 30 fraud cases had occurred locally, with approximately 30 million dollars in fraudulent funds flowing into puppet accounts in Hong Kong after multiple transfers. The investigating officers pointed out that a certain group used a large number of accounts for transfers and repeatedly withdrew cash to purchase virtual currency on local virtual asset trading platforms to evade detection. The Hong Kong police also disclosed data showing that in the first half of this year, law enforcement agencies arrested 5,693 people for money laundering-related crimes, a 40% increase compared to the same period last year; among them, 4,465 were puppet account holders, accounting for 78% of those arrested.

ChainCatcher news, on July 26, 2024, the People's Court of Liyang City, Jiangsu Province, made a ruling on a virtual currency money laundering case. A jobless man, known by the alias Xiao Wu, was sentenced to six months in prison, with a one-year probation, and fined 2,000 yuan for participating in virtual currency money laundering activities.The case revealed that in November 2023, Xiao Wu contacted a "money laundering company" via Telegram to repay credit card debts incurred during his university years from investing in foreign exchange and virtual currencies. He purchased U coins on an exchange and then transferred and sold them through the "U-MATOU" app, making a profit from the price difference. Despite being warned that this was illegal, Xiao Wu continued his operations due to repayment pressure.On December 22, 2023, the Liyang Public Security Bureau received a fraud report involving Xiao Wu's bank card. Investigations showed that Xiao Wu's bank account had a total of 13 transactions, amounting to over 25,000 yuan, with personal illegal profits exceeding 5,000 yuan.After his arrest, Xiao Wu expressed remorse and admitted that if he had not been caught, he might have gone further down the path of crime.

ChainCatcher news, according to Bitcoin.com, Agustin Villa, a resident of Rhode Island, USA, pleaded guilty to his alleged involvement in cryptocurrency money laundering related to international drug trafficking, with an amount involved of 25 million dollars. Agustin Villa acted as a messenger for a drug crime organization and delivered over 75,000 dollars in cash to a cooperating witness on May 26, 2022.

ChainCatcher news, according to the Qingdao Evening News, the Qingdao police recently handled a case involving money laundering using the virtual currency USDT, arresting a total of 9 suspects, with the involved funds exceeding 8 million yuan.The case originated from an operation by the Jiaozhou Public Security Bureau in February this year, during which police discovered that suspect Xue was allegedly assisting others in money laundering activities by registering a "study abroad" company and a corporate account while arresting him for telecom fraud. Further investigation revealed that Xue's "partner" Kuang and other suspects were converting illegal proceeds into USDT by purchasing business licenses to open corporate accounts and returning the funds to their source.Currently, the 9 suspects have been subjected to criminal coercive measures in accordance with the law, and the case is about to enter the review and prosecution stage. The police remind the public not to lend their personal identity information or corporate accounts to avoid being used for illegal activities.

ChainCatcher news, according to reports from the Hong Kong Public Network, the Hong Kong police launched anti-money laundering operations codenamed "Hammer Strike" and "Conspiracy Attack" on the 8th, arresting a total of 12 people. They are suspected of laundering approximately 30 million Hong Kong dollars involved in fraud cases through large withdrawals and trading virtual currencies.The police noticed that a large amount of proceeds from fraud crimes flowed into local bank accounts between January and October this year. The Wealth Intelligence and Investigation Division conducted an in-depth investigation and found that the criminal proceeds related to 32 local and overseas phone scams and investment frauds flowed into 54 local bank accounts. The total loss amount for the victims in these cases reached 97 million Hong Kong dollars, with the highest amount involved in a single case exceeding 2.4 million dollars. After investigation, a local money laundering criminal group was identified, which recruited friends and relatives to open numerous bank accounts. They used mobile dating applications to attract victims with high-return investment plans, enticing them to transfer money to the involved bank accounts. After receiving the fraudulent funds, group members quickly withdrew large amounts of cash, then purchased virtual currencies and repeatedly bought and sold to disguise the source of the funds.The police conducted surprise searches at multiple locations the day before yesterday, including two virtual currency investment companies, arresting 5 men and 7 women. Eleven individuals are suspected of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and one person is suspected of obstructing police duties. The ages of those arrested range from 20 to 45 years old, and they are suspected of laundering approximately 30 million Hong Kong dollars through large withdrawals and trading virtual currencies. During the operation, about 1.2 million Hong Kong dollars in cash, more than 25 bank cards, several smartphones, and computers were seized. The 12 individuals are currently in police custody, and the police do not rule out the possibility of more arrests.

ChainCatcher news, according to China National Radio, the Wuchang District Branch of the Wuhan Public Security Bureau has successfully dismantled a gang that used virtual currency for money laundering through the collaboration of three centers: the "Intelligence, Guidance, and Action" Integrated Center, the Law Enforcement Case Management Center, and the Synthetic Operations Center. Seven arrest teams simultaneously conducted operations in provinces and cities such as Deyang in Sichuan, Changchun in Jilin, and Dongguan in Guangdong, resulting in the criminal detention of 27 individuals. The funds flowing through the accounts controlled by this gang reached 1 billion yuan.Investigations revealed that since April of this year, the suspect, referred to as "Certain," contacted his "superior" through the "Airplane" software to accept tasks, organizing gang members to use proceeds from telecom fraud to purchase digital virtual currency online, which was then transferred to the superior's account, thus helping the telecom fraud gang launder money and earning commissions in the process. Preliminary statistics indicate that this money laundering gang was involved in funds amounting to as much as 1 billion yuan. The case is currently under further investigation.

ChainCatcher news, the Chongqing Tongliang Court concluded a case on October 24 involving the transfer of funds to overseas criminals, with an amount exceeding 2.25 billion yuan and 21 individuals sentenced. The defendants received USDT converted from the proceeds of crimes such as online fraud and online gambling committed by upstream criminals through offline BitPay wallets and other means, and then sold it on virtual currency trading platforms.It is reported that by fabricating excuses such as withdrawing project funds and migrant workers' wages, the gang members organized to withdraw cash at bank counters in multiple provinces and cities including Chongqing, Sichuan, and Shanghai, delivering the cash to designated recipients specified by the upstream. Each cash delivery ranged from 10 million to several tens of millions of yuan. By the time the case was uncovered, Jiang and others had transferred a total of over 2.25 billion yuan to overseas individuals in this manner, with total profits exceeding 22.62 million yuan.

ChainCatcher news, according to United News Network, the Criminal Investigation Bureau's Cybercrime Division in Taiwan uncovered a fraudulent case involving a fake Taishin Securities mobile app last year. Tracing the flow of the victims' illicit funds revealed that a money laundering suspect with the surname Qiu was allegedly using virtual currency for money laundering, frequently traveling to Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries. In June of this year, law enforcement apprehended Qiu upon his return to the country, bringing back Qiu and three others involved in the case. Subsequent investigations of their mobile phones revealed that Qiu had handled 320 million USDT since February of last year.Police investigations found that the fraud group required victims to transfer funds to dummy accounts during their scams. The illicit funds were then transferred abroad to virtual currency trading platforms or individual currency dealers through multiple layers of dummy accounts to purchase virtual currency. Qiu would then obtain the virtual currency and sell it for cash, thereby achieving the purpose of money laundering, while Qiu collected a 1% "service fee" as profit.The police also arrested accomplices surnamed Liao, Chen, and Huang, and charged them with fraud, money laundering, and other offenses. They will continue to investigate the source and flow of funds related to this money laundering operation (a criminal group specifically for laundering money from overseas online fraud).

ChainCatcher news, BTC-e co-founder Alexander Vinnik has been accused of laundering at least $4 billion through BTC-e. His lawyer Arkady Bukh revealed that if the evidence against Vinnik is conclusive, he may plead guilty.Arkady Bukh stated, "If the materials show that everything is very bad and the chances of winning are low, then we will talk about a guilty plea. If we believe the evidence is weak, we will go for a jury trial."The lawyer will request to postpone the court hearing originally scheduled for February next year, as he does not have sufficient time to review "hundreds of thousands of pages" of case materials.Alexander Vinnik was detained in Greece in the summer of 2017, extradited to France in 2020, and later sentenced to five years in prison and fined €100,000 for money laundering in France. In August 2022, Vinnik was extradited to the United States, where he could face up to 55 years in prison if convicted, and the court previously denied his bail application.

According to ChainCatcher news and Sichuan News Network, the Public Security Bureau of Mianyang City, Youxian District recently cracked a major telecommunication network fraud money laundering case supervised by the Ministry of Public Security. They successfully dismantled a domestic telecommunication fraud money laundering gang of nearly a hundred people directly controlled by an overseas fraud den, apprehending more than 90 criminal suspects, destroying 3 dens, seizing over 80 mobile phones used in the crimes, 3 vehicles, more than 100 involved bank cards, and verifying over 30 million yuan in involved funds.Investigations revealed that this team had a close "cooperative relationship" with overseas order-scam fraud dens. Hu was mainly responsible for connecting and receiving money laundering business; Zhong was responsible for organizing and directing "team members" for card recruitment, cash withdrawal, and repayment operations; Liu transferred the involved fraudulent funds to overseas merchants by purchasing virtual currency. Currently, the relevant criminal suspects have been subjected to criminal coercive measures by the public security organs, and the case is still under further investigation.

ChainCatcher news, according to the WeChat official account of the Shanxi Provincial Public Security Department, recently, the Xinghualing Branch of the Taiyuan Public Security Bureau in Shanxi Province has dismantled a criminal chain that provided "money laundering" services for telecom fraud gangs through the buying and selling of cigarettes and the use of virtual currency transactions. A total of 23 criminal suspects were arrested, involving 43 telecom fraud cases, with a total amount of nearly 84 million yuan.The police remind that this is a new type of money laundering method for telecom fraud, which uses the offline buying and selling of easily liquidated goods like cigarettes to "clean" illegal funds, and then further launders the money by exchanging it for virtual currency and transferring the funds abroad.

ChainCatcher news, according to Xinhua News Agency, the Public Security Bureau of Changyang Tujia Autonomous County in Hubei recently cracked a virtual currency money laundering case, arresting 22 criminal suspects, with a total money laundering amount reaching 300 million yuan.In June of this year, the Changyang police received a report stating that a resident was unable to withdraw funds after "investing" over 400,000 yuan on a certain platform. The police quickly organized an investigation, and on July 27, 16 arrest teams consisting of more than 40 police officers acted simultaneously, capturing 17 criminal suspects in Guangshui City, Hubei Province, among which 9 were criminally detained. They seized more than 500,000 yuan in cash and over 30 devices including mobile phones and computers on site, and froze more than 200,000 yuan in funds along with a virtual currency account valued at 300,000 yuan.Criminal suspect Fu confessed that he started helping foreign criminals launder money from September 2022, earning a commission of 150 yuan for every 10,000 yuan of virtual currency "USTD" traded. To expand the scale, Fu recruited relatives, friends, and classmates into the scheme, sharing profits based on the trading volume. By the time of the case, Fu had illegally profited over 500,000 yuan.

ChainCatcher news, according to a report by The Paper, from April 2015 to February 2021, the defendant Wang XX, in collusion with Xiang XX (who is at large) and others, successively registered and acquired multiple companies, fabricated a large number of businesses, and used the promise of nearly 100% annualized returns as bait to carry out illegal fundraising activities. Over nearly six years, Wang XX and others raised more than 21.4 billion yuan.To conceal and hide the source and nature of some of the criminal proceeds, on February 21, 2021, before and after fleeing, Wang XX entrusted his ex-wife to use more than 6.78 million yuan obtained from illegal fundraising to purchase over one million "virtual currencies," which were then transferred to his digital wallet account. After Wang XX was captured, the phone on which he installed the digital wallet app was legally confiscated.Later, his ex-wife registered an account on a "virtual currency" trading platform using someone else's identity information and transferred the "virtual currency" from the digital wallet account using the password that Wang XX had informed her of beforehand. After cashing out through trading, she withdrew the funds at the bank, transferring more than 6.52 million yuan in this manner. On December 31, 2021, the Dalian Municipal Procuratorate filed a public prosecution against Wang XX for suspected fundraising fraud and money laundering. (The Paper)

ChainCatcher news, the Dalian People's Procuratorate sent personnel to support the prosecution in the case against Wang XX, who is suspected of raising over 21.4 billion yuan in funds and his relatives using "virtual currency" to commit the crimes of fundraising fraud and money laundering.To conceal and hide the source and nature of part of the criminal proceeds, on February 21, 2021, before and after Wang XX fled, he entrusted his ex-wife Wang XX to use over 6.78 million yuan obtained from illegal fundraising to purchase over one million "virtual currency" and transferred it into his digital wallet account. After Wang XX was captured while fleeing abroad, the phone with the digital wallet app installed was lawfully seized by the investigative authorities. In May of the same year, with the cooperation of Wang XX's father Wang YY, mother Zhao ZZ, and others, Wang XX used someone else's identity information to register an account on a "virtual currency" trading platform website and transferred the "virtual currency" from the digital wallet account using the password previously provided by Wang XX, cashing out through trading and then withdrawing cash from the bank, thereby transferring over 6.52 million yuan in funds in the aforementioned manner. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, according to China News Network, reported that the Public Security Bureau of the Horqin District in Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has dismantled a money laundering gang that used online blockchain to exchange digital virtual currencies after a three-month investigation, arresting 63 criminal suspects. The amount of money laundered by this gang reached 12 billion yuan.In July 2022, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Public Security Department issued a warning to the Tongliao City Public Security Bureau of the Horqin District, stating that the bank card fund flow of a certain Shih was abnormal, with a monthly transaction volume exceeding 10 million yuan, suspected of money laundering crimes. After analysis, it was found that Shih's gang involved multiple provinces and cities, with many participants.From September to October 2022, the special investigation team deployed 230 police officers to 17 provinces and cities including Heilongjiang, Guangdong, Beijing, and Henan to start the operation, and persuaded the main suspect Zhang, who had fled to Bangkok, Thailand, along with technical operation personnel, to return to the country. Thus, the major money laundering gang led by Ji and Zhang, which used online blockchain to exchange digital virtual currencies, was dismantled, with illegal gains totaling approximately 130 million yuan. (source link)