Alleged perpetrators of $80M confidence scam indicted

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that U.S. nationals Lu Zhang, Justin Walker, Hailong Zhu, and Joseph Wong have been charged for their involvement in a pig butchering scheme that resulted in losses exceeding $80 million, The Hacker News reports. Over $20 million of the illicit proceeds acquired from cryptocurrency investment scams have been laundered by the defendants to their bank accounts and shell companies as part of the scheme, according to the Justice Department. Both Zhang and Walker could be imprisoned for up to 20 years if convicted but law enforcement has not yet apprehended the other co-conspirators. Such a development comes just weeks after the conviction of Nigerian national Eze Harrison Arinze for engaging in a $592,000 pig butchering scheme, as well as the Justice Department's sequestration of almost $9 million worth of cryptocurrency linked to an organization in Southeast Asia that conducted pig butchering scams.