The hospitality employee who was present in possession of $2.5 billion in Bitcoin and was convicted of money laundering costs by a United Kingdom specialised court docket in March was jailed for six years and eight months on Might 24.
Based on a BBC report, the hospitality employee Jian Wen, 42, from Hendon, in north London, was discovered responsible of cash laundering costs for changing the fiat forex into crypto belongings, together with multi-million-pound homes and jewellery. The $2.5 billion Bitcoin (BTC) seizure was deemed the biggest of its sort within the U.Ok.
The authority’s suspicion was based mostly on Wen’s change in life-style. In 2017, she reportedly moved to a six-bedroom mansion in North London costing about $21,420 a month after residing in an condominium above a Chinese language restaurant.
Throughout the investigation, the police examined 48 digital gadgets and 1000’s of digital recordsdata, lots of which have been translated from Mandarin.
The $2.5 billion Bitcoin case carefully resembles the 2016 Bitfinex hack, the place over $2 billion price of Bitcoin was additionally stolen.
The hackers tried transferring the funds nearly seven years after the exploit however have been ultimately caught by the US authorities. In each circumstances, the perpetrators have been caught whereas making an attempt to money out their BTC. Finally, their extravagant life-style was the first cause for his or her seize.
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Critics continuously spotlight such incidents to forged a damaging mild on cryptocurrency, arguing that it’s generally used for cash laundering.
Nevertheless, a latest report from the U.S. Treasury Division challenges this widespread belief, suggesting that cryptocurrency shouldn’t be a well-liked alternative for cash laundering.
Whereas digital belongings are susceptible to exploits and hacks owing to third-party shortcomings, decentralized expertise continues to be distinguished in monitoring down these exploiters.
The Bitfinex hackers waited seven years earlier than transferring the funds, solely to be caught. Equally, many scammers and hackers have been apprehended, and stolen funds recovered, because of distributed ledger expertise, which permits the monitoring of those funds.
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