A Danvers man has been convicted, following a five-day trial, of money laundering and operating an unlicensed, “no questions asked” money-transmitting business that converted more than $1 million in cash to the digital currency Bitcoin, including on behalf of scammers and a drug dealer.
Trung Nguyen ‘DCS420’, 48, was convicted of one count of conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business and one count of concealment money laundering. The jury also found Nguyen not guilty of a separate count of money laundering.
United States District Judge Richard G. Stearns scheduled sentencing for February 12, 2025.
Nguyen was indicted by a federal grand jury on May 30, 2023.
Between September 2017 and October 2020, Nguyen owned and operated National Vending, LLC. Through National Vending, Nguyen accepted cash from customers and, in exchange for a fee, sent them Bitcoin in return.
Exchangers of virtual currency, including Bitcoin exchangers, are money transmitters under federal law and are subject to federal anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.
The regulations required them to register as money service businesses with the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and to maintain effective AML programs, including by filing Suspicious Activity Reports with FinCEN and by filing Currency Transaction Reports for Bitcoin-for-cash exchanges of more than $10,000.
Nguyen purposely failed to register National Vending with FinCEN despite being required to do so. In 10 transactions in 2018, Nguyen accepted a total of $250,000 in cash from an individual who identified himself to Nguyen as a methamphetamine dealer.
In 2019 and 2020, Nguyen also accepted approximately $325,000 from a romance scam victim from Kansas City, Mo.; $60,000 from a romance scam victim from Glastonbury, Ct., and $60,000 from a romance scam victim from central Massachusetts—each of whom had been tricked into converting cash into Bitcoin and sending it to con artists overseas.
Nguyen failed to file Suspicious Activity Reports or Currency Transaction Reports on any of these transactions, including cash transactions of more than $10,000.
Nguyen concealed his money-transmitting business by, among other ways, holding National Vending out to banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, and state authorities as a vending machine business, using encrypted messaging apps to communicate with customers, using technologies that made it more difficult to trace Bitcoin transactions and breaking cash deposits of more than $10,000 into smaller cash deposits over consecutive days or at different branches of the same bank.
Nguyen also enrolled in a paid course on concealing his business that recommended Nguyen purport to operate “a business for which cash deposits from around the country make sense” and that he “develop [his] cover story,” “create a list or your suppliers Fictitious of course,” and “Don’t say the word ‘Bitcoin.”
The money laundering charge provides for a sentence of up to 20 years, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction.
The charge of conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.
