Odaily Planet Daily News: A money laundering group has been manipulating mainlanders to open bank puppet accounts in Hong Kong since last year, allowing the group to launder more than 88 million yuan in black money, some of which are related to 48 fraud cases. The police arrested 7 men and 1 woman yesterday (13th) on suspicion of conspiracy to launder money, 6 of whom are core members of the group. The Hong Kong Police Commercial Crime Investigation Bureau locked the group in November 2023. The investigation found that the group recruited mainlanders to open puppet bank accounts in Hong Kong from September 2023 to March 2024, and defrauded victims through different types of frauds, such as telephone fraud, nude chat fraud, investment fraud, job fraud, etc. According to the instructions of the fraudsters, the victims deposited the fraudulent funds into a puppet account controlled by the criminal group. The group then withdrew the fraudulent funds from the puppet account in cash and purchased cryptocurrencies on the cryptocurrency over-the-counter (OTC) exchange. At the same time, they opened accounts on overseas cryptocurrency platforms under false identities and deposited the cryptocurrencies purchased with the fraudulent funds, which were then transferred to multiple cryptocurrency wallets to launder the proceeds of crime. The police also pointed out that the group used 72 puppet bank accounts opened locally to launder more than HK$88 million in criminal proceeds, of which HK$6.7 million was related to 48 fraud cases. (Sing Tao Daily)
