A Massachusetts man has been handed a six-year jail sentence after federal authorities uncovered his unlicensed crypto operation, which laundered over $1 million beneath the guise of a merchandising machine enterprise.
Trung Nguyen, who operated out of Danvers, ran a cash-to-Bitcoin conversion service from 2017 to 2020 with out registering with U.S. monetary regulators. To masks the operation, he created a entrance referred to as Nationwide Merchandising, fabricating enterprise data and avoiding any point out of cryptocurrency in formal communications.
In accordance to prosecutors, Nguyen’s shoppers included rip-off victims and a drug vendor who laundered $250,000 by means of him. He didn’t report giant money transactions or file the required compliance paperwork with the Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community (FinCEN).
His arrest adopted a number of conferences with undercover brokers the place he accepted giant sums of money in trade for Bitcoin, charging a 5% payment. Investigators additionally discovered that Nguyen used encrypted messaging and staggered money deposits to keep away from detection.
A federal jury convicted him in late 2023 on one rely of cash laundering and for working with out a money-transmitting license. Along with his jail time period, he should forfeit $1.5 million and serve three years of supervised launch.
