China's Gansu "U Merchant" was convicted of aiding and abetting credit for trading USDT, and the illegal gains were recovered

According to Mars Finance, an article on the official account of the Jinchang Intermediate People's Court stated that recently, the Yongchang Court of Gansu, China, sentenced two cases involving telecom fraud, sentencing ten defendants to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from ten months to one year for the crime of assisting in information network criminal activities, and actually recovered more than 1.19 million yuan of illegal income. According to reports, since 2022, Shen Moumou has raised funds to purchase computers, Internet of Things cards and other equipment for illegal profit, and lured four people including Li Mou and Chen Mou to join the gang. He also recruited more than ten people to rent houses in Hefei, Anhui and other places to set up USDT (Tether) trading studios, and set up illegal over-the-counter trading groups through Telegram software, with low income and high income for profit. During this period, the five people repeatedly took risks, knowing that the U coins they received came from online gambling, telecommunications fraud and other black and gray industries, but still helped telecom fraud criminals to make payments and settlements between Tether and RMB at a "high exchange rate" price. At the same time, Shen also contacted the downstream "currency dealer" Li and others to settle the payment through Alipay, WeChat transfer, cash deposit and other methods according to the payment method specified by the upstream criminals. As of the time of the incident, the defendants involved in the case had made a total profit of more than 880,000 yuan, including more than 5.9 million yuan of funds defrauded by more than 10 victims including Meng, a resident of Chengguan Town, Yongchang County, when they participated in virtual currency investment and online order brushing. The funds were all transferred to the accounts related to Tether transactions used by Shen and others. The court held that in this case, Shen and others used virtual currency trading activities to help telecommunications network fraudsters transfer funds, which has deviated from the simple virtual currency business behavior. Such behavior should be included in the key links of the whole chain to combat telecommunications network fraud crimes, and the criminals involved should be punished.