A US man operating what prosecutors called a “no questions asked” cash-to-Bitcoin conversion service has been sentenced to six years behind bars and was ordered to hand over millions of dollars. Boston federal court Judge Richard Stearns sentenced Trung Nguyen, from Danvers, Massachusetts, to six years in prison followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered him to forfeit $1.5 million, the Boston US Attorney’s Office said on May 22. Prosecutors said Nguyen ran an unlicensed money-transmitting business called National Vending between September 2017 and October 2020, which used various techniques he learned in an online course to evade authorities.
Related: Crypto use in money laundering ‘far below’ cash — US TreasuryThe indictment said Nguyen used encrypted messaging apps and “technologies that made it more difficult” to trace his Bitcoin transactions and broke up the cash deposits into smaller sums over consecutive days and at different branches of the same bank to evade notice by authorities.
As part of the course, Nguyen was taught how to conceal his actual business from banks, crypto exchanges and state authorities by masquerading as a vending machine company that accepted cash deposits, had a list of fictional suppliers, and generally avoided using the phrase “Bitcoin” where possible.
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Author / Journalist: Cointelegraph by Stephen Katte
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