Hong Kong Banker Jailed Four Years Over Billion-Dollar Fraud and Crypto Bribes
Hong Kong's anti-corruption agency has cracked down on a massive fraud scheme involving more than $1.6 billion in fake financial documents. A former bank manager, Lam Chun-yin, was sentenced to four years in prison for accepting over $470,000 in cryptocurrency bribes to authenticate the documents.
Lam worked at China Construction Bank (Asia) and was not authorized to handle commercial credit facilities or letters of credit. However, he helped authenticate fake standby letters of credit and other financial documents between April and June 2022.
The scheme involved Tether, a cryptocurrency commonly known as USDT, which was used to bribe Lam in exchange for his services. The documents had a combined stated value of more than $1.6 billion, with transactions connected to Vesttoo, a financial technology company that uses bank-issued standby letters of credit as collateral for investment-related deals.