The Ministry of Public Security of China reported that on August 20, a Chinese citizen, the organizer of the cryptocurrency pyramid MBI Group, whose investors’ losses are estimated at $14 billion, was extradited from Thailand.

The extradition of Zhang Mou Mu was the result of a nearly four-year investigation launched by Chinese police in November 2020. The suspect was arrested in Thailand in the summer of 2022.

In May, a Thai court approved Zhang’s extradition to China, making him the first criminal suspect to be extradited under a China-Thailand law enforcement cooperation treaty.

It is known from the preliminary investigation materials on the case of MBI Group and its organizer that the project began its activities in 2012, attracting investors with promises of high income from cryptocurrency investments. MBI Group positioned itself as an international investment company providing high profits through trading in digital assets.

However, law enforcement insists that it was a classic financial pyramid, a Ponzi scheme, in which funds from new investors were used to pay out the first participants. To join the “high-yield scheme,” MBI Group victims paid the scammers from 700 yuan ($98) to 245,000 yuan ($34,300) in cryptocurrency. In total, the creators of the scheme managed to attract digital assets from more than 10 million investors worth about 100 billion yuan ($14 billion).

Earlier, China’s Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate said that under the new legal interpretation, virtual asset transactions are considered illegal activities and are classified as actions that “conceal and disguise the source of proceeds from criminal activities.”