A US man working what prosecutors referred to as a “no questions requested” cash-to-Bitcoin conversion service has been sentenced to 6 years behind bars and was ordered at hand over hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
Boston federal court docket Choose Richard Stearns sentenced Trung Nguyen, from Danvers, Massachusetts, to 6 years in jail adopted by three years of supervised launch, and ordered him to forfeit $1.5 million, the Boston US Legal professional’s Workplace stated on Might 22.
Prosecutors stated Nguyen ran an unlicensed money-transmitting enterprise referred to as Nationwide Merchandising between September 2017 and October 2020, which used numerous strategies he realized in a web based course to evade authorities.
As a part of the course, Nguyen was taught the best way to conceal his precise enterprise from banks, crypto exchanges and state authorities by masquerading as a merchandising machine firm that accepted money deposits, had a listing of fictional suppliers, and customarily prevented utilizing the phrase “Bitcoin” the place doable.
In keeping with prosecutors, amongst Nguyen’s buyer base have been a number of rip-off victims who have been tricked into changing money into Bitcoin (BTC) by con artists abroad, in addition to a drug vendor who despatched $250,000 in money throughout 10 transactions in 2018.
The Justice Division stated Nguyen transformed greater than $1 million to Bitcoin and “purposely failed” to register with the Treasury’s Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community (FinCEN) regardless of being required to take action beneath federal Anti-Cash Laundering laws.
Nguyen additionally “did not file Suspicious Exercise Studies or Foreign money Transaction Studies on any of those transactions, together with money transactions of greater than $10,000,” in accordance with prosecutors.
Undercover cops sting Nguyen
Nguyen would typically meet his purchasers in individual to simply accept giant sums of money, which is how he was caught, prosecutors stated.
A Might 2023 indictment stated that in a number of conferences with undercover regulation enforcement officers, he accepted money and despatched Bitcoin in return, taking simply over 5% in fee.
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The indictment stated Nguyen used encrypted messaging apps and “applied sciences that made it harder” to hint his Bitcoin transactions and broke up the money deposits into smaller sums over consecutive days and at totally different branches of the identical financial institution to evade discover by authorities.
Nguyen was charged with working an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise and two counts of cash laundering. He pleaded not responsible to all fees in June 2023.
A jury convicted him in November on the unlicensed money-transmitting enterprise cost and on simply one of many cash laundering fees, discovering him not responsible of a separate cash laundering cost.
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