The Treasury Department has blacklisted several digital currency addresses it says belong to three Chinese nationals accused of trafficking synthetic opioids in the US.
The news: The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) alleges that Xiaobing Yan, Fujing Zheng, and Guanghua Zheng have been running an international drug trafficking operation in the US. In turn, it has frozen these individuals’ US-based assets. OFAC has also blacklisted a number of digital currency addresses associated with them, claiming that the accused drug traffickers laundered their proceeds “in part by using digital currencies such as Bitcoin.”
Not the first time: These aren’t the first digital currency addresses that OFAC has blacklisted. In November 2018, the office added Bitcoin addresses linked to two Iranian nationals to the Specially Designated Nationals list, prohibiting US citizens from dealing with them.
Don’t settle for half the story.
Get paywall-free access to technology news for the here and now.