Huiwang finally has a definitive case precedent from a Korean court: currency exchange brokers face a two-year prison sentence plus recovery of proceeds, and on-chain money laundering can’t be escaped.

According to Digital Asset, a South Korean currency exchange dealer in his 40s, identified as A, was sentenced to 2 years in prison by the Seoul Central District Court for involvement in a Cambodian-crime-related money laundering organization, the Huifeng Group, through unreported virtual asset transactions. He was also ordered to recover 1.33 hundred million Korean won. The court found that between 2022 and 2024, A failed to report to financial authorities, conducting approximately 155 billion Korean won in digital-asset transactions across 194 trades; and between 2021 and 2023, he carried out about 2.9 billion Korean won worth of unregistered foreign exchange business across 135 transactions, including remittances to China. This marks the first time a Korean court has confirmed a guilty ruling related to digital-asset money laundering suspicions involving the Huifeng Group.