An Asian man was sentenced to six years in prison and three years of supervised release by a federal court in Boston on the 22nd for operating an unauthorized cash-to-digital currency remittance service called “no questions asked” and allegedly laundering money for fraud and drug trafficking groups. He was also ordered to forfeit illegal proceeds totaling over $1.51 million.
The 48-year-old Asian man, Trung Nguyen, also known as DCS420, was indicted by a grand jury on May 30, 2023, and was convicted in November 2024 of charges related to “unlicensed money transmission” and “concealed money laundering.”
Between September 2017 and October 2020, Trung Nguyen owned and operated National Vending, LLC, which purported to be involved in vending machine-related business activities. In reality, under this company’s name, he accepted cash from clients (including proceeds from fraud and drug trafficking groups) and then transferred an equivalent amount of Bitcoin into designated digital wallets under the guise of fees. Federal regulations categorize virtual currency exchangers as “money transmitters,” requiring them to register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, develop anti-money laundering programs, and submit reports on suspicious activities and large transactions.
However, Trung Nguyen intentionally did not register with FinCEN and failed to submit necessary reports for any Bitcoin-to-cash transactions exceeding $10,000. In 2018, he received $250,000 in cash from a methamphetamine dealer. During 2019 and 2020, he also collected approximately $385,000 from victims of romance scams through the same money laundering method.
For instance, between 2019 and 2020, Trung Nguyen received around $325,000 from a romance scam victim in Missouri, $60,000 each from victims in Connecticut and the central region of Massachusetts. They were all deceived into exchanging cash for Bitcoin to send to supposed overseas lovers. Trung Nguyen did not report any suspicious activity or currency transactions related to these deals.
To evade oversight, Trung Nguyen pretended to conduct vending machine business, interacted with banks and crypto exchanges, and communicated with clients using encrypted messaging apps. He also split excess deposits into different branches to indirectly “structure” cash deposits. Moreover, he purchased paid courses to learn how to disguise the true nature of his business and trained himself to “fabricate fictitious supplier lists” to avoid triggering alerts with the keyword “Bitcoin” in leaked information.