Chinese National Gets 46 Months in Prison for $37 Million Crypto Scam Targeting Americans

Jingliang Su, a Chinese national, was sentenced to 46 months in prison for the role he played in the laundering of more than $36.9 million taken from victims of crypto scams. 

Su, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal money transmitting business, was also ordered to pay restitution of more than $26.8 million.

“This defendant and his co-conspirators scammed 174 Americans out of their hard-earned money,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, in a statement. “In the digital age, criminals have found new ways to weaponize the internet for fraud.”

“The Criminal Division and its law enforcement partners have continued to evolve and caught large-scale scammers, who target people through their phones, social media, and fake internet sites, steal from them, and then move their money through cryptocurrency and wire transfers outside of the United States,” he added.

The scam ring convinced victims to transfer funds to accounts controlled by Su and his co-conspirators, who would then launder the money through shell companies or international bank accounts. 

Believing they had invested the funds, victims were told that their investments were going up. In reality, the scammers had stolen the funds and ultimately converted them to Tether’s dollar-backed stablecoin, USDT.

“New investment opportunities may sound intriguing, but they have a dark side: attracting criminals who, in this case, stole then laundered tens of millions of dollars from their victims,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California, in a statement. 

One of Su’s co-conspirators, a California man named Shengsheng He, was sentenced to 51 months in prison for his role in the scheme in September. In total, eight co-conspirators have pleaded guilty thus far. 

Losses from crypto scams ballooned to more than $17 billion last year, according to estimates from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Its report cited the rise of artificial intelligence as a major catalyst, aiding a 1,400% boost in impersonation-related scams.