Shandong Police in China Crack Cryptocurrency Money Laundering and Extortion Case Involving 268 Crimes Across 5 Provinces

On November 11, according to Dazhong Daily, police in Dezhou, Shandong, recently cracked a case of extortion conducted under the guise of environmental inspections. The criminal gang used drones to film livestock farms, impersonated public officials and journalists to post negative videos, and coerced breeders into paying fees to have the content removed.

Police investigations found that the gang was organized into an extortion unit, a filming unit, and a money laundering unit. Funds were collected via QR codes and third-party payment proxy platforms, which then settled accounts with the money laundering unit using cryptocurrencies to conceal the flow of funds.

In two months, the gang committed 268 crimes across 22 cities in five provinces—Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Jiangsu, and Anhui—involving over 800,000 yuan. Authorities have arrested 23 suspects and sealed, confiscated, and frozen more than 2 million yuan in related assets.