Crypto: South Korea Busts $100m Underground Remittance Ring Using Wechat,...

South Korea’s customs agency charged three suspects over a more than $100 million crypto-linked remittance scheme using WeChat Pay and Alipay, per Yonhap.

South Korean authorities have uncovered an underground remittance operation that moved roughly 150 billion won (about $100 million to $110 million) through digital assets, according to local media reports.

The Korea Customs Service has referred three suspects for prosecution, including a Chinese man in his 30s, on charges of violating the Foreign Exchange Transaction Act, Yonhap News reported Monday.

Over the past four years, the illicit operation has allegedly laundered more than $100 million collected through WeChat Pay and Alipay, which was converted into cryptocurrencies through overseas exchanges and transferred into South Korean wallets before being converted back to fiat currency.

The group disguised the transfers as legitimate expenses, including for cosmetic surgery costs and tuition fees for students abroad.

The case ranks among the largest crypto-linked illegal remittance schemes uncovered in South Korea in recent years and highlights the growing challenges authorities face in tracking cross-border financial crimes involving digital assets.

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In December, a woman in her thirties was jailed for laundering about $180 million in illicit funds through cryptocurrencies, one of the largest such operations identified by regulators.

The scale of the case highlights the “challenges regulators face when trying to track illicit crypto flows,” wrote financial platform OneSafe in a December post.

Related: Bitcoin rallies, ETF flows rebound as US crypto policy stalls: Finance Redefined

Source: CoinTelegraph