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Chinese national Jingliang Su was sentenced to 46 months in US prison for laundering $36.9M in a USDT-based pig-butchering scheme that funneled victim funds via Deltec to Cambodia.<\/p>\n
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A US federal court has sentenced Chinese national Jingliang Su to 46 months in prison for laundering more than $36.9 million tied to a cross\u2011border crypto investment scam that targeted 174 US victims. Prosecutors say the case marks a fresh escalation in Washington\u2019s campaign against large\u2011scale \u201cpig butchering\u201d fraud rings leveraging digital assets.<\/a>\u200b<\/p>\n According to the US Attorney\u2019s Office for the Central District of California, Su was part of an international network that used fake trading platforms, social engineering, and Tether (USDT) transfers to strip victims of their savings. Fraudsters approached targets via unsolicited messages on social media, calls, texts, and online dating apps before steering them into sham \u201chigh\u2011yield\u201d crypto opportunities. The group then directed victims to websites designed to mimic legitimate exchanges, showing fabricated account gains while siphoning away funds in the background.<\/a>\u200b<\/p>\n First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli warned<\/a> that glossy digital pitches remain a powerful lure: \u201cNew investment opportunities may sound intriguing, but they have a dark side: attracting criminals who, in this case, stole then laundered tens of millions of dollars from their victims.\u201d\u200b<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Authorities estimate more than $36.9 million moved from US bank accounts into a single account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas before being converted into USDT and transmitted to wallets in Cambodia, where co\u2011conspirators dispersed the funds to regional scam operations. Su, who has been in federal custody since December 2024, pleaded guilty in June 2025 to one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal money\u2011transmitting business and was ordered to pay over $26 million in restitution alongside his prison term. Eight co\u2011defendants have also pleaded guilty, including Jose Somarriba and ShengSheng He, who received 36\u2011month and 51\u2011month sentences respectively.<\/a>\u200b<\/p>\n Investigators say the structure mirrors so\u2011called pig butchering schemes, long\u2011con frauds in which scammers build emotional rapport before \u201cslaughtering\u201d victims financially. US officials have already charged Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi in a separate case alleging forced\u2011labor \u201cpig butchering\u201d operations that stole billions worldwide.\u00a0Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reports that high\u2011yield investment programs and pig butchering remained the dominant scam types in 2025, with crypto fraud and theft inflicting more than $17 billion in losses that year.\u200b<\/p>\n The ruling lands against a still\u2011buoyant market backdrop. Bitcoin trades around $89,127.74 over the last 24 hours, with roughly $38.64 billion in volume. Ethereum changes hands near $3,008.32, up about 2.5% day\u2011on\u2011day with more than $29.3 billion in daily trading volume. Tether, the stablecoin used in Su\u2019s laundering route, holds its peg at roughly $1.00, underpinned by a market capitalization above $186 billion.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chinese national Jingliang Su was sentenced to 46 months in US prison for laundering $36.9M in a USDT-based pig-butchering scheme that funneled victim funds via Deltec to Cambodia. Summary Prosecutors…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20793,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20792\/revisions\/20793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How the laundering scheme worked<\/h2>\n
Pig butchering and a broader crackdown<\/h2>\n
Market snapshot: BTC, ETH, USDT<\/h2>\n