Hong Kong police arrested eight suspects in a cross-border money laundering group that laundered HK$88 million through virtual currency

BlockBeats news, on May 14, according to the Sing Tao Daily, a cross-border money laundering group has been manipulating mainlanders to open bank puppet accounts in Hong Kong since last year, allowing the group to launder more than 88 million yuan in black money, some of which are related to 48 fraud cases. The police arrested 7 men and 1 woman yesterday (13th) on suspicion of conspiracy to launder money, 6 of whom are core members of the group.

The Commercial Crime Investigation Bureau of the Police locked a cross-border money laundering group in November 2023. The investigation found that the group recruited mainlanders to open puppet bank accounts in Hong Kong from September 2023 to March 2024, and defrauded victims through different types of frauds, such as telephone fraud, nude chat fraud, investment fraud, job fraud, etc.

According to the instructions of the fraudsters, the victims deposited the fraudulent funds into puppet accounts controlled by the criminal group. The group then withdrew the fraudulent funds from the puppet accounts in cash and purchased cryptocurrencies on over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency exchanges. At the same time, they opened accounts on overseas cryptocurrency platforms under false identities and deposited the cryptocurrencies purchased with the fraudulent funds, which were then transferred to multiple cryptocurrency wallets to launder the proceeds of crime.

The police also pointed out that the group used 72 puppet bank accounts opened locally to launder more than HK$88 million in criminal proceeds, of which HK$6.7 million was related to 48 fraud cases. As of yesterday, the police arrested 7 men and 1 woman aged between 26 and 51 in Hong Kong for suspected conspiracy to launder money. They were reported as lifeguards, photographers, telephone programmers, salesmen and unemployed. Among them, 6 were core members and 2 were puppet account holders.

During the operation, the police seized a large number of bank documents, ATM cards and several mobile phones. Detective Inspector Chung Cheuk-yin of the Commercial Crime Bureau said that when the police analyzed the payment records of the puppet account, they found that there was a transaction amount of 2 million yuan, so they took the initiative to contact the victim. After understanding, they learned that she had fallen into an online romance scam and immediately prevented her from suffering further losses. The police are tracing the whereabouts of the proceeds of the crime, and the largest loss case involved a sum of 2.2 million yuan, involving an investment scam.