California man sentenced in a cryptographic scam of $ 37 million in the middle of the repression of the ongoing justice department

Shengsheng He, a California man who helped wash almost $ 37 million stolen from US investors through a global cryptocurrency fraud, was sentenced Monday to 51 months in a federal prison and was ordered to pay $ 26.9 million in restitution, federal prosecutors said.

Resident of La Puente, California, declared himself guilty in April for conspiracy to operate a money transmission business without license.

According to the Department of Justice, he was co -owner of Axis Digital Limited, a company based in Bahamas used to receive and transfer victims funds.

The scheme was based on unplayed messages, telephone calls and appointment application conversations to generate trust with the victims.

“The co-conspirators promoted investments of fraudulent digital assets to the victims,” ​​the Department of Justice wrote. “The scammers would tell the victims that their investments appreciated in value when, in fact, the funds that the victims sent to the scammers had been stolen.”

Once the victims sent money, the funds were channeled in a single -axis digital account in Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, then became the stable (USDT) stablecoin and moved to the wallets controlled by the scammers.

The authorities said the funds were enrupted through ghost companies and accounts abroad to obscure their origin.

Prosecutors said the scam operated in Cambodian centers of “pig butcher shop”, where criminals use social engineering to defraud the victims.

Pork carnage scams are typically high -volume digital fraud schemes, and in 2024, they recorded $ 9 billion according to the analysis chain. The victims believed they were investing in legitimate digital assets, but their money was being washed in a network of accounts that cover multiple countries.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comments by Decipher.

The case is part of a broader offensive against fraud related to cryptography. In recent months, the Department of Justice has seized digital assets linked to terrorist financing, returned millions to victims of investment fraud and went to high seas exchanges used to wash illicit funds.

In March, prosecutors confiscated $ 201,000 in cryptography linked to Hamas. In July, the Department of Justice began to return $ 7.1 million to the victims of an oil and gas fraud scheme of $ 97 million.

The authorities have also eliminated domains linked to exchanges administered by Russian accused of processing more than $ 800 million in illicit transactions.

Eight conspirators declared themselves guilty in the digital case of the axis, including José Somarriba and Jingliang su, two of their commercial partners. His, a Chinese citizen, helped convert and transfer stolen funds.