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Hong Kong Arrests 2 Suspected of Laundering $384M Through Banks and a Crypto Exchange

Customs agents raided a home in the Yau Tong district and arrested a 28-year-old woman and her 21-year-old brother.

Updated May 11, 2023, 6:03 p.m. Published Dec 30, 2021, 8:28 a.m.

Hong Kong’s Customs and Excise Department arrested two people suspected of laundering about $384 million through personal bank accounts and a cryptocurrency exchange, the agency said in a release dated Tuesday.

The two were arrested under the Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance (OSCO) for “dealing with property known or reasonably believed to represent proceeds of an indictable offense,” or money laundering.
The release said the suspects had opened personal accounts from May to November last year at various Hong Kong banks, including virtual banks and a cryptocurrency trading platform. They were accused of engaging in suspected money laundering by dealing with money from unknown sources through bank transfers, cash deposits and cryptocurrency.
The woman, 28, and her brother, 21, were arrested in Hong Kong’s Yau Tong district and released on bail pending further investigation. More arrests haven’t been ruled out.
Under the OSCO, a person commits an offense if he or she deals with any property knowing or having reasonable grounds to believe that such property in whole or in part directly or indirectly represents any person’s proceeds from an indictable offense. The maximum penalty upon conviction is a $5 million fine and 14 years in prison, and proceeds from the crime are subject to confiscation.

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Money Laundering Hong Kong Crypto Exchange Crime

Greg Ahlstrand

Originally from California, I've been Asia-based since 1999, headquartered in Hong Kong and Jakarta and traveling throughout the Asean countries, Japan, Korea, the Chinese mainland and Taiwan for stories. Made Australia a couple of times, too.

I started my journalism career as a news assistant at the Fresno Bee in Central California while studying the subject in school after the Navy. I went from launching and recovering helicopters on flight decks at sea to recovering papers fresh off the printer in the Bee's basement and launching them onto the editors' desks, whose editors had long since gone home for the night. Eventually, they let me stop delivering the paper and start writing stuff in it. My first beat was night cops: liquor store robberies, gang shootings, fatal car crashes (almost always alcohol related). It was an education.

I am, as implied above, a U.S. Navy veteran. I served in seagoing helicopter squadrons as an aviation anti-submarine warfare technician throughout the Asia Pacific region and the Indian Ocean. I have a significant number of sailor stories to tell. I have no significant crypto holdings.

Among my hobbies are welding, building stuff, home remodelling, (or knocking a house down and starting from scratch if it's too far gone to fix), riding horses and rebuilding old tractors. So far I've done a Ford 8N and a Ford 9N. It's slow going, because I live in Hong Kong and the tractors are in California, so I only get to work on them once or twice a year, for a week or two at a time - and that was before covid.

I love my Lab, Cooper, whom my neighbors asked me to adopt two years ago when they moved back to Shanghai from Hong Kong. Cooper and I actually planned the whole thing -- we've known each other almost his whole life -- but his first parents are unaware of the conspiracy; and they send him Christmas presents every year.