The US Treasury Department has accused the financial director of the international media company Epoch Times, Bill Guan, of organizing a scheme to launder at least $67 million of illegally obtained funds through cryptocurrencies.
According to the case file, from 2020 to May 2024, Guan created the Make Money Online team in one of the company's offices. Its members used cryptocurrencies to purchase funds received from various crimes at a discount of 20-30% and transferred them to prepaid debit cards.
To open bank accounts and crypto wallets on unnamed trading platforms, the participants of the scheme used stolen personal data.
According to the prosecution, during the period of illegal operations, the annual income of Epoch Times increased, according to the reports, from $15 million to $62 million. In response to bank inquiries regarding the increase in the number of transactions, Guan reported that the funds were received by the media company as donations.
Together, for conspiracy to launder money and two counts of bank fraud, the defendant faces a maximum sentence of 80 years in prison. The case has been referred to the court.
Earlier, ForkLog reported that the United States had secured the extradition from Estonia of the founders of the HashFlare cloud mining service and the Polybius Bank digital bank Sergey Potapenko and Ivan Turygin. They are accused of cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering in the amount of $575 million.