At the beginning of December, a virtual currency money laundering case in Taiyuan, Shanxi, came to a close—Chen was sentenced to two and a half years, Li got one and a half years, and both had to pay fines. Behind this case lies a thrilling story of 1.47 million RMB in cash vanishing in an instant.

In May this year, Ms. Zhang came across someone named "Lin Hao" while scrolling through short videos. Lin Hao claimed that his comrade worked at a big company and had insider information on stocks, offering to take her to their internal platform to "buy the rise," promising a guaranteed 5% profit per session. But there was a catch—it had to be traded in US dollars, and she could only exchange cash for dollars with a designated person, then transfer it to the comrade’s dollar account.

On May 21, Ms. Zhang took 1.47 million RMB in cash to a hotel in Wanbailin District. Chen and Li were already there, sent by their boss as "currency exchange intermediaries." Ms. Zhang provided the dollar account given by "Lin Hao" (which was actually the scam gang’s Tether address) to Chen, who then forwarded it to their boss. The boss sent a total of 202,328 USDT to that address in three transactions, which equaled exactly 1.47 million RMB. Chen and Li handed over the cash to their boss—the whole process seemed smooth.

But what happened? "Lin Hao" never transferred any money to Ms. Zhang’s company account. By the time she realized and reported it to the police, the money had already been converted to Tether and disappeared.

The prosecutor acted quickly: checked chat records to prove that Chen and Li already knew the money was illegitimate (large amounts of cash plus secretive operations—anyone could tell it was suspicious); traced the Tether transactions through the virtual currency platform data, fully exposing the flow of funds. On August 17, the case was transferred to the prosecutor's office, and the evidence chain was solid.

The most crucial point: the two of them even split a 30,000 RMB "commission" afterward. The prosecutor determined clearly that they had assisted in the cross-border transfer of "cash → dollars → Tether," which constituted the classic crime of concealing or disguising criminal proceeds. The court accepted the sentencing recommendations and handed down the appropriate punishments and fines.

This serves as a reminder: beware of so-called "insider channels."