United States authorities have arrested two individuals in connection with a crypto heist that saw over $73 million siphoned. The duo, of Chinese extract, allegedly masterminded the scheme and funnelled the stolen funds through financial institutions in the U.S. before finally converting into Tether USDT.
According to a recent announcement by the Department of Justice (DoJ), one Daren Li (41 years) and 3-years younger Yicheng Zhang are now in police custody and have been charged.
Meanwhile, an indictment had already been submitted at a California court on Thursday, which details the roles that the duo played in the scheme.
Per the announcement, Li and Zhang ran an international criminal ring that laundered millions from ‘pig butchering’ crypto scams. For clarity, pig butchering is a kind of crypto scam where fraudsters take their time to gain the trust of potential victims. After this, they then convince them to invest huge sums before making off with the same.
There's no Call To Action with the ID #3.$73 Million Crypto Heist Masterminds Arrested
Prosecutors claim that the defendants had conspired with other ring members to open U.S. bank accounts in the name of shell companies. That was before convincing anyone to invest. The scammers then waited for the right time to ask their victims to transfer millions of dollars into these U.S. bank accounts from where they laundered the ill-gotten funds.
The DoJ also claims that the bad actors dispersed the stolen funds to various domestic and international bank accounts. A statement from the Justice Department reads partly:
“The fraud scheme involved more than $73 million laundered through U.S. financial institutions to bank accounts in the Bahamas and converted to the virtual asset USDT, or Tether.”
Li and Zhang are faced with charges of conspiring to launder money and six counts of international money laundering. If found guilty, they could be seeing a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment for each of those charges. This means that they could each be looking at prison terms of around 140 years behind bars.
There's no Call To Action with the ID #3.Growing Menace of Pig Butchering Scams
Pig butchering scams are getting increasingly popular as online criminals have recently turned to it for their lucrative tendencies. In November 2023, a similar scheme occurred that took advantage of over 70 United States citizens. The U.S. Justice Department did seize $9 million from the scheme at the time. However, the alarming rate at which similar cases are springing up is now a cause of concern for lawmakers and regulators.
It might also be noteworthy that regulators and global authorities have been working tirelessly to protect investors and sanitize the crypto space. While regulators are proposing new rules that meet up with the reality of today’s digital asset space, authorities are also effecting arrests, even as the judiciary continues to pass sentences to those found on the wrong side of the law. Hopefully, these concerted efforts will serve as a warning to other bad actors that illicit acts will not be tolerated in the crypro space.
