Shengsheng He, a California resident, has been sentenced to 51 months in federal prison for laundering nearly $37 million as part of a global cryptocurrency fraud scheme. He was also ordered to pay $26.9 million in restitution, according to federal prosecutors.
He, who lived in La Puente, California, pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
He co-owned Axis Digital Limited, a company based in the Bahamas, which was used to collect and transfer funds stolen from U.S. investors. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said that the scheme relied on unsolicited contact via messages, calls, and dating apps to build trust with victims before pushing fake digital asset investments.
“Victims were falsely told that their investments were growing in value,” the DOJ stated. “But the reality was their funds were being siphoned off by scammers.”
Once victims sent money, it was funneled through an Axis Digital account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, converted into Tether (USDT), and then transferred to wallets controlled by the scam network.
To conceal the origin of the stolen funds, scammers routed the money through multiple shell companies and international accounts.
The fraud operation was run out of so-called “pig butchering” centers in Cambodia, where cybercriminals use social engineering tactics to defraud victims at scale. These scams have become increasingly widespread—in 2024 alone, they generated $9 billion in losses, according to data from Chainalysis.
This case is one of many in the DOJ’s ongoing efforts to combat cryptocurrency-related fraud. Recent actions include asset seizures tied to terrorist financing and the return of millions in stolen funds to victims of various schemes.
In addition to He, eight co-conspirators have pleaded guilty, including business partners Jose Somarriba and Jingliang Su. Su, a Chinese national, played a key role in converting and transferring stolen funds across the crypto network.
The DOJ has also taken action against domains linked to Russian-operated crypto exchanges involved in laundering over $800 million.
