A Chinese national has been extradited to the United States on suspicion of involvement in a crypto scam targeting Americans, with over $36.9 million in involved funds.

BlockBeats news, October 24 — According to an official statement from the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said on October 23 that 44-year-old Chinese national Zheng Zhao was extradited from the Netherlands to the United States for allegedly participating in a transnational crypto investment fraud scheme targeting U.S. citizens, and made his initial court appearance the same day. Zhao has been ordered detained and is scheduled to appear in court again on November 30. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

According to court documents, the fraud network was based at scam centers in Cambodia and contacted U.S. victims through social media, phone calls, text messages, and dating platforms, using websites impersonating legitimate cryptocurrency trading platforms to induce victims to invest and falsely claiming that the investments were continuously increasing in value. The funds involved were subsequently laundered through U.S. shell companies, international bank accounts, and digital asset wallets.

The investigation showed that more than $36.9 million in victim funds were transferred from U.S. bank accounts controlled by the network to a single account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas. Zhao and other co-conspirators arranged for the funds to be converted into USDT and then transferred to digital asset wallets controlled in Cambodia, ultimately distributed to heads of scam centers in Cambodia and surrounding regions. The scheme involved at least 174 identified U.S. victims.

Currently, 8 co-conspirators have pleaded guilty. The U.S. Department of Justice emphasized that criminal charges do not imply the defendant is guilty, and Zhao is presumed innocent until a guilty verdict is rendered by the court.