An American man was sentenced to 6 years in prison for running a 'no problem' cash-to-Bitcoin service and was ordered to pay millions of dollars.
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns sentenced Truong Nguyen from Danvers, Massachusetts, to 6 years in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, and ordered him to forfeit $1.5 million. The Boston U.S. Attorney's Office announced the sentence on May 22.
Prosecutors claimed that Nguyen operated an unlicensed money transfer business called 'National Vending' between September 2017 and October 2020, using various techniques learned from online courses to evade law enforcement.
In the course, Nguyen learned how to disguise his actual business by posing as an automatic vending machine company accepting cash deposits, including a fake vendor list, and to avoid using the term 'Bitcoin' as much as possible.
Prosecutors said that some of Nguyen's clients were victims deceived into converting cash to Bitcoin, and there was also a drug dealer who transferred $250,000 in cash through 10 transactions in 2018.
The Department of Justice stated that Nguyen converted over $1 million to Bitcoin but intentionally did not register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, violating federal anti-money laundering regulations.
Nguyen did not report any suspicious activity and did not file currency transaction reports for cash transactions over $10,000. Prosecutors stated that Nguyen often met with clients to accept large amounts of cash, which was also the reason for his arrest.
A May 2023 indictment stated that after several meetings with an undercover officer, he received cash and exchanged it for Bitcoin, charging a commission of over 5%.
The indictment also showed that Nguyen used encrypted messaging applications and other techniques to increase transaction secrecy and deposited cash over multiple days into different bank branches to avoid detection.
Nguyen was charged with unlicensed money transfer and two counts of money laundering and pleaded not guilty to all charges in June 2023. A jury found him guilty of unlicensed money transfer and one count of money laundering in November, while he was acquitted of the other money laundering charge.
