Inner Mongolia's Sifang Payment Involvement in Online Gambling Case Amounted to 2.95 Billion RMB, with Some Commission Settled in USDT, 5 Individuals Sentenced to 3-6 Years

July 27th, the Middle Court of Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, upheld the original verdict in the second trial of the case of Ma for the crime of illegal business operation. In this series of cases, Zhu and others set up a fourth-party payment platform to provide fund settlement services for overseas gambling websites through 10 third-party payment companies and 105 merchants, with a settlement amount exceeding 2.95 billion yuan, and an illegal profit of about 42.85 million yuan.

What makes this case special is that some of the commissions were received in the form of virtual currencies such as USDT.

The court determined that Zhang and others' wallet addresses had sent and received millions of USDT multiple times (equivalent to tens of millions of yuan), but the final determination of the profit amount was mostly based on the returned yuan; only Ma, for not returning the money, was determined to have a profit of 2.95 million yuan (based on the wallet receiving about 4.67 million USDT, deducted after the return), sentenced to four years and six months in prison, fined 3 million yuan, and confiscated illegal gains. The other four individuals were sentenced to 3-6 years.

The police obtained evidence by requesting wallet addresses from Tether and transaction details from the OEX trading platform. Experts pointed out that although virtual currencies are traceable on the blockchain, it is difficult to tie them to real entities without real-name registration. In China, there is a lack of professional auditing firms, so the determination of the amount involved in the case still largely relies on confessions.