The US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blacklisted Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) addresses for three Chinese individuals, based on the Kingpin Act for crime financing. The three individuals were large-scale suppliers of opioids and used crypto assets to transfer funds outside the financial system.
The drug traffickers, Xiaobing Yan, Fujing Zheng, and Guanghua Zheng, faced sanctions after coordinated actions from OFAC, FinCen and US law enforcement agencies.
“The Chinese kingpins that OFAC designated today run an international drug trafficking operation that manufactures and sells lethal narcotics, directly contributing to the crisis of opioid addiction, overdoses, and death in the United States. Zheng and Yan have shipped hundreds of packages of synthetic opioids to the U.S., targeting customers through online advertising and sales, and using commercial mail carriers to smuggle their drugs into the United States,” said Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.“OFAC and FinCEN’s coordinated action with U.S. law enforcement leverages Treasury’s authorities to confront the d...