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Chinese Police Arrest 63 People Accused of Laundering $1.7B Using Cryptocurrency

The illicit funds were converted into tether and then laundered by people around the world.

Updated Dec 12, 2022, 5:29 p.m. Published Dec 12, 2022, 4:54 p.m.

Chinese police have arrested 63 people in a massive case that laundered 12 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion) for both domestic and foreign criminal groups using cryptocurrency, according to a statement released over the weekend.

The criminal group began its operations in May 2021, with the sources of the funds coming from illegal pyramid schemes, fraud and gambling. The group then converted the funds into the stablecoin tether (USDT) and then recruited people from around the world to open crypto accounts and help launder the funds, according to Chinese authorities.

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A total of about 130 million yuan ($18.6 million) in illegal income was confiscated.

China Money Laundering Arrest

Nelson Wang

Nelson edits features and opinion stories and was previously CoinDesk’s U.S. News Editor for the East Coast. He has also been an editor at Unchained and DL News, and prior to working at CoinDesk, he was the technology stocks editor and consumer stocks editor at TheStreet. He has also held editing positions at Yahoo.com and Condé Nast Portfolio’s website, and was the content director for aMedia, an Asian American media company. Nelson grew up on Long Island, New York and went to Harvard College, earning a degree in Social Studies. He holds BTC, ETH and SOL above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.