Four LA Residents Indicted for Laundering Crypto Proceeds in Pig Butchering Scam

Jimmy Aki
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Another round of crypto investment scam indictment has seen four individuals charged by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for money laundering and other fraudulent activities.

284 Transactions Results in $80 Million Illicitly Gained

Unsealing the indictment on December 14, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) stated that a seven-count charge had been brought against four Los Angeles residents.

According to the Justice Department, the individuals were involved in a pig butchering scam that saw 284 transactions, resulting in the loss of $80 million from targeted victims.

Providing details on the criminals, the DoJ revealed that Lu Zhang (38), Justin Walker (31), Joseph Wong (32), and Hailong Zhu (40) were all involved in committing the heinous crimes.

The DoJ stated that the four individuals are charged with committing money laundering, conspiracy to conceal ill-gotten gains, and international money laundering.

Shedding light on the intricate nature of the fraudulent syndicate, the DoJ said that the four individuals conspired to open shell companies and bank accounts to launder the funds they received from victims of their pig butchering scams and other fraudulent activities.

To hide their tracks, they transferred the funds to both domestic and international financial institutions. During its investigation, the Justice arm of the US government stated that as much as $20 million were linked to bank accounts associated with the four indicted individuals.

Walker and Zhang face a maximum penalty of 20 years in a US penitentiary if found guilty. However, the DoJ did not provide details on the other two individuals.

The US Secret Service’s Global Investigative Operations Center is presently handling the case.

The four individuals are jointly prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California and the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section’s (CCIP) National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET).

NCET was established with the sole purpose of combating the rapid growth of illicit use of crypto assets in the US.

$1.7 Billion Lost to Scam Year-to-Date

The cryptocurrency space has become a target for malicious actors in the last three years. The nascent industry, which is largely unregulated and in its infantile stage, has lost billions of dollars to crypto hacks and fraudulent activities.

Keeping a close watch on happenings in the emerging industry, premier bug bounty platform Immunefi reported that the crypto market has lost more than $1.7 billion to bad actors so far in 2023.

This disclosure was made in Immunefi’s November report, which detailed a series of unauthorized transactions occurring on both centralized exchange platforms and within the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

Immunefi further highlighted that November 2023 witnessed a staggering loss of over $343 million in the cryptocurrency space due to hacks and fraudulent activities. This marked a substantial increase, reaching 15.4 times the total losses of $22.2 million documented in October 2023.

About Jimmy Aki PRO INVESTOR

Based in the UK, Jimmy is an economic researcher with outstanding hands-on and heads-on experience in Macroeconomic finance analysis, forecasting and planning. He has honed his skills having worked cross-continental as a finance analyst, which gives him inter-cultural experience. He currently has a strong passion for regulation and macroeconomic trends as it allows him peek under the global bonnet to see how the world works.