U.S. Court Sentences Jingliang Su in $36.9 Million USDT Scam-Laundering Case
Jingliang Su received a 46-month federal prison sentence for helping launder more than $36.9 million stolen from 174 U.S. victims through Cambodian scam centers, with the laundering route using Tether rather than Bitcoin.
On January 27, 2026, Chinese national Jingliang Su was sentenced in U.S. federal court to 46 months in prison for his role in laundering more than $36.9 million taken from victims of a digital-asset investment fraud network operating from scam centers in Cambodia. The court also ordered more than $26.8 million in restitution. The Justice Department said 174 U.S. victims had been identified.
The laundering mechanics are important to state accurately. Victim funds moved through U.S. shell companies and international bank accounts to an account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas. Su and his co-conspirators then directed the bank to convert the money into Tether, or USDT, and transfer it to a digital-asset wallet in Cambodia, from which the stablecoin was distributed to scam-center leaders. DOJ did not identify Bitcoin as the asset used in that laundering chain.
This event is included under the timeline's narrow altcoin exception. It is not being recast as a Bitcoin transaction or Bitcoin crime. Instead, it records the enforcement environment surrounding large-scale digital-asset fraud that formed part of the same broader scam-center ecosystem confronting Bitcoin users, regulators and law enforcement. Its value is contextual: a federal sentence showing how pig-butchering networks operationalized stablecoins and cross-border digital-asset rails, while Bitcoin remained the dominant reference asset in the wider market.