According to Odaily Planet Daily, the U.S. District Court unsealed a grand jury indictment accusing two Chinese citizens of laundering at least $73 million through shell companies. Daren Li, 41, and Yicheng Zhang, 38, were charged with conspiracy to launder money and six substantive international money laundering charges. They are suspected of managing an international money laundering ring that laundered proceeds from the cryptocurrency "pig killing" scam. Victims were deceived in the scam and transferred millions of dollars into U.S. bank accounts opened in the names of dozens of shell companies whose only apparent purpose was to facilitate money laundering.
The money launderer network then facilitated the transfer of these funds to other domestic and international bank accounts and cryptocurrency platforms to conceal the source, nature, ownership and control of the funds. The scam involved laundering more than $73 million through U.S. financial institutions, which were transferred to bank accounts in the Bahamas and converted into the virtual asset USDT. A cryptocurrency wallet involved in the scam received more than $341 million in virtual assets.
