The three were arrested on suspicion of more than $10 million in bank fraud and crypto money laundering schemes

By Elizabeth Napolitano, CoinDesk, compiled by Song Xue, Golden Finance

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement Thursday that three men deceived New York-area banks into paying more than $10 million and tried to scam them out of that money by converting it into cryptocurrency. **

Zhong Shi Gao, Naifeng Xu, Fei Jiang are suspected of stealing millions of dollars from nearly a dozen financial institutions in the New York metropolitan area between 2018 and 2022. The three people posed as victims of fraudulent transfers to force banks to credit bank accounts with unauthorized transfer amounts, “effectively doubling their funds,” the indictment alleges.

“These allegations should serve as a warning to fraudsters and cybercriminals who believe they can use cryptocurrency to hide their identities – and we will work with our partner agencies to find you and hold you accountable for your crimes,” Williams said in a statement. ”

The defendants have all been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and face four criminal charges in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York: conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit telecommunications fraud affecting financial institutions, conspiracy to commit money laundering and aggravated identity theft. According to a press release, the maximum sentence for all charges combined could reach nearly 100 years. **

Authorities said the men recruited foreigners to open U.S. bank accounts that the trio could use to manage transfers they pretended they didn’t need.