US charges two over laundering $43 million from investment fraud

U.S. authorities charged Zhuoying Chen and Haojie Zhang for allegedly managing a money laundering network that processed at least $43 million from cyber-enabled investment fraud scams. The funds originated from 'pig butchering' or romance baiting schemes, where victims were lured into fraudulent investment opportunities via social media and messaging platforms. The defendants used 140 bank accounts under 45 shell companies to transfer stolen funds to China. This case highlights the growing scale of investment fraud, which accounted for 49% of scam incidents in the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report.

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