An online gambling case involving 2.95 billion yuan was exposed; multiple people used cross-platform payment platforms to settle USDT and other cryptocurrencies and were sentenced.

Deep Tide TechFlow message. On July 25, according to a report by The Paper, the Intermediate People’s Court of Xilin Gol League in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region handed down a second-instance judgment upholding the original verdict in a case involving Ma for the crime of illegal business operation. This is one of a series of cases in which the Four-Party Payment platform provided funding payment settlement services for gambling platforms. In this case, some defendants were accused of receiving commissions or rebates in the form of virtual currencies such as USDT.

After investigation, between May 24, 2022 and October 18, 2023, five people including Ma collected and paid illegal funds on behalf of others through third-party payment accounts, and used virtual wallets to receive USDT virtual coins and bank card collection, among other settlement methods, settling through 105 merchants across 10 third-party payment companies, with settlement amounts exceeding RMB 2.95 billion.

Ultimately, the court found that Ma committed the crime of illegal business operation and sentenced him to four years and six months in prison, and imposed a fine of RMB 3 million. The five individuals who were brought into custody in sequence were already sentenced by the court for illegal business operation to prison terms ranging from 3 to 6 years.