The US Treasury, or more specifically its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has recently blacklisted three Chinese residents and their respective crypto accounts. The reason? Smuggling of drugs and money laundering allegations.
The three Chinese individuals are the following: Guanghua Zheng, Xiaobing Yan and Fujing Zheng. All three of them are currently named as narcotics traffickers and harsh punishments will follow for all three of them. Some of these include: freezing of their properties in the US, exposing any of their connections in the schemes, email addresses, assets and even their passport numbers.
OFAC listed Litecoin and Bitcoin addresses that belong to the three individuals. According to press, the three are currently legally known as “significant foreign narcotics traffickers”.
The whole process of OFAC conducting the blacklisting operation required the assistance of important stakeholders such as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN and a couple of local law enforcement agencies.
According to press release:
[Fujing] Zheng and Yan have shipped hundreds of packages of synthetic opioids to the U.S., targeting customers through online advertising and sales, and using commercial mail carriers to smuggle their drugs into the United States
The three Chinese nationals reportedly run an international drug trafficking business that was widespread in the US, contributing to the increase of overdose and death in the country.
The OFAC has taken serious measures in identifying any international and domestic crime operations, one of which included the blacklisting of two Iranians in November 2018. Both of their names were added to the Specially Designated Nationals list.
More about illicit crypto activity can be found here: