Jilin Yanbian cracked an underground money house case using virtual currency to transfer funds, involving a total amount of over 1 billion yuan

Odaily News Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province, has uncovered a criminal network of underground money houses involving more than 1 billion yuan in 10 provinces across the country, and arrested more than 20 suspects. At the same time, the successful investigation of the case also revealed the criminal conspiracy of using virtual currency to provide a channel for fund transfer. The case has the characteristics of a family-style crime, that is, the gang members are basically relatives and friends. They buy low and sell high in the domestic foreign exchange black market under the guise of overseas companies, and earn exchange rate differences. The main criminal suspect Zhang Liang confessed that they borrowed foreign exchange funds from "peers" or used virtual currency "exchange" and other methods to purchase virtual currency from currency speculators and currency traders in the country with RMB, and then sold virtual currency abroad to obtain foreign exchange, thereby achieving the purpose of transferring illegal income from the country to abroad in disguise. The Yanbian Economic Investigation Bureau stated that by conducting statistics on the sources and uses of funds in underground banking cases investigated by public security organs across the prefecture from 2020 to 2023, it has been verified that funds from labor, commerce, tourism, etc. account for the majority of the funds involved in the cases, and the rest are suspected funds involved in illegal crimes such as fraud and corruption.