A court in China has sentenced members of a “gang” to prison and the payment of fines for money laundering using the yuan central bank digital currency, according to the local press. 

The People's Procuratorate of Yuecheng District, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province sentenced three people to prison terms ranging from seven to 16 months for money laundering activities. The date of the trial was not given.

The gang members were identified only by their family names. They laundered 200,000 yuan ($27,580) in digital form over four days in mid-September in Shaoxing, the Chinese business website Mpaypas reported. A fourth person was arrested, but their fate was not specified.

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Yuan, who had come to Shaoxing in an unsuccessful attempt to find employment, saw an advertisement in his hotel offering a 0.8% commission to people who could cash out digital yuan with local merchants. After several solo operations, he recruited his girlfriend Zhang and their friend Kuo to assist him.

CBDC privacy exploited

The gang offered merchants in Shaoxing, Jinhua, Hangzhou, Jiaxing and other places a commission of 1% to 1.5% to receive digital yuan from their “superior” and change it into cash. The gang used “overseas niche chat tools” to communicate with that superior. Zhang and Kuo received a 0.5% commission. The publication said:

“Digital RMB [yuan] payment transactions are highly private, and overseas fraud gangs take advantage of this feature.”

“Not many stores” accept the digital yuan, Mpaypas continued. Public security organizations received a report of abnormal digital yuan flows among merchants and quickly apprehended the gang members.

The digital yuan offers “controllable anonymity,” as is necessary for crime prevention, according to current and former People’s Bank of China officials. That phrase was used in the press report as well.

Digital yuan crime rare but not unknown

Reports of fraud using the digital yuan are rare. In January, the website Cnstock, which refers to itself as “China's capital market legal information disclosure platform,” reported on a similar case in Shanghai that occurred in May 2023. It was described as the first of its kind in that city.

Eight people, including merchants, were convicted and received sentences of between four and 54 months in prison, plus fines, in the Shanghai case. They laundered a total of $1,379,000, some of which came from “telecommunications network fraud.”

The ability to use phone numbers alone to open digital yuan accounts was crucial in the implementation of that scheme. The illicit activities were uncovered after bank staff reported them.

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