A 27-year-old Chinese national, identified as Li Liu, also known by aliases "Qiunan Li" and "Xiaoying Zhao," has been handed a 28-month prison sentence for her role in laundering roughly $3.5 million stolen from victims of investment scams, including the so-called "pig butchering" schemes. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Liu pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering on June 4, acknowledging her part in a scam that preyed on people's trust, built through fraudulent relationships on dating services and social media.
Documents reveal that Liu, residing in Los Angeles' Koreatown, used a fake passport to open a bank account for a fictitious company named Ocean X Trading Ltd Inc. in September 2024. Within a single month, she funneled $83,461 from this account to a Hong Kong-based entity, Alamo Tech Ltd. Liu and her associates frequently employed forged documents, like passports and driver’s licenses, to facilitate their operations, which included the collection of packages containing cash from victims of wire fraud, as reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California.
In a stark illustration of the scheme's depth, in March 2025, Liu used another fabricated passport and business documents to open an account at a shipping company in Koreatown. It was from this location that she received, documented, and dispatched multiple packages stuffed with currency to co-defendant Shuai Lyu and others tied to the conspiracy. Per the U.S. Attorney's Office, law enforcement officials found images on Lyu's cellphone estimated to represent approximately $3.5 million in laundered funds.
Liu's accomplice, Shuai Lyu, equally involved in the money laundering conspiracy, awaits his sentencing set for September 4, after a guilty plea which could land him up to 20 years behind bars. The case, which peeled back the layers of a sophisticated financial web designed to exploit unwitting victims, was thoroughly investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Erik M. Silber, Chief of the Post-Conviction and Special Litigation Section.
