Manipulate mainlanders to open puppet bank accounts in Hong Kong and launder HK$88 million through virtual currency (from Coinsradar.net)

The Hong Kong Police Commercial Crime Bureau locked in a cross-border money laundering 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 various 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 money into the puppet account controlled by the criminal group. After that, the group would withdraw the fraudulent money from the puppet account in cash and purchase cryptocurrencies on the cryptocurrency over-the-counter exchange (OTC). At the same time, it would open an account on an overseas cryptocurrency platform with a false identity and deposit the cryptocurrency purchased with the fraudulent money, and then transfer it to multiple cryptocurrency wallets to launder the proceeds of the crime.

The police also pointed out that the group used 72 local bank puppet accounts to launder more than HK$88 million in criminal proceeds, of which HK$6.7 million was related to 48 fraud cases.

As of yesterday, the police arrested 7 men and 1 woman aged between 26 and 51 in Hong Kong for suspected conspiracy to launder money. They reported themselves as lifeguards, photographers, telephone programmers, salesmen and unemployed. Among them, 6 were core members and 2 were puppet account holders.

During the operation, the police seized a large number of bank documents, ATM cards and multiple mobile phones. Detective Inspector Chung Cheuk-yin of the Commercial Crime Investigation Bureau said that when the police analyzed the payment records of the puppet accounts, they found that there was a transaction amount of HK$2 million, so they took the initiative to contact the victim. After understanding, they learned that she had fallen into an online romance scam by mistake, and then stopped her from suffering further losses.

The police are tracing the whereabouts of the proceeds of crime, and the largest loss case involved a sum of HK$2.2 million, involving an investment scam.

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