In brief
- A 47-year old man from the Seattle area helped defraud investors of nearly $100 million, prosecutors said.
- Victims thought they were investing in oil and gas, but funds were quickly transferred to bank accounts or crypto exchanges and never returned.
- For his role in laundering funds tied to the scheme, Geoffrey K. Auyeung was sentenced to five years in prison.
Geoffrey K. Auyeung, a 47-year old man from the Seattle, Washington area, was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering for his role in a crypto fraud scheme that defrauded victims of nearly $100 million.
Auyeung, who was arrested in 2024 and pleaded guilty in February, was responsible for taking in fraud proceeds before forwarding them to his co-conspirators’ bank accounts or crypto addresses in the form of Bitcoin, Ethereum, or dollar-backed stablecoins like USDT and USDC.
“Mr. Auyeung facilitated a fraud, developed by others, that stole investor money while lulling them with promises of a legitimate escrow account,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd in a statement.
“And even after he was indicted and arrested, Auyeung spent 16 months secretly still communicating with his co-conspirators and continuing to get his illicit fees by having the money go to his wife’s bank accounts,” Floyd added. “He showed utter disrespect for the law.”
Auyeung and his co-conspirators persuaded victims to send them money from at least 2022-2024, convincing them that their funds were being put to work via investments in the oil and gas industry. Instead, when he received the money, he was transferring it to bank accounts or crypto exchanges like Gemini, Bitstamp, and Coinbase, to buy crypto assets.
Eventually, most of the crypto tokens were transferred to leading crypto exchange Binance, and victims received no further communication from Auyeung.
During the two-year period from June 2022 to July 2024, Auyeung’s accounts received $97.1 million in wire transfers and other deposits, all of which the government believes were fraud proceeds.
According to prosecutors, Auyeung funneled funds through various accounts and entities to reduce scrutiny, arguing that he “rapidly converted vast sums of fiat funds into cryptocurrency, which he then rapidly dispersed to various deposit addresses provided by his co-conspirators.”
He earned at least $4 million in commission payments from co-conspirators for his role and is forfeiting more than $2.3 million seized from bank accounts at the time of his arrest, along with a car and $7.1 million seized from crypto wallets.
