Police in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia are charging 63 locals with laundering 12 billion yuan ($1.7 billion) through the USDT stablecoin.
According to local law enforcement officers, since May 2021, the detained attackers have been organizing online pyramid schemes, fraudulent schemes and gambling. The group, through Telegram, invited investors and attracted people to create “cryptocurrency accounts”. Each participant in the scheme received a commission depending on the amount of processed cryptocurrency transactions. The suspects converted the funds into Tether stablecoins and then transferred them into Chinese yuan.
Local prosecutors insist that the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies made it harder for law enforcement to trace money stolen from users. More than 200 police officers were involved in the case, who, as part of the investigation, worked with foreign cryptocurrency exchanges and tracked suspicious transactions on blockchains. Thus, the police tracked down the two suspects in Bangkok and secured their extradition to China.
Despite the ban on cryptocurrencies in China, this is not the first major crime related to cryptoassets. In September, police in Hengyang City, Hunan Province, arrested 93 people involved in a similar scheme that helped them earn 40 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) in cryptocurrencies. And in March, the Shanghai police uncovered a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme involving more than 100 million yuan ($14.3 million).
Last year, Chinese police cracked down on a digital yuan scam by arresting a man who posed as civil servants to potential victims.
Source: Bits
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