Chinese National Sentenced in Los Angeles to 46 Months for Laundering $36.9 Million From Cambodia-Based Scam Centers
On January 27, 2026, the Department of Justice announced that Jingliang Su, a 45-year-old Chinese national, had been sentenced in federal court in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, to 46 months in federal prison for his role in laundering more than $36.9 million from victims in a digital asset investment conspiracy carried out from scam centers in Cambodia. United States District Judge R. Gary Klausner also ordered him to pay $26,867,242 in restitution.
Su pleaded guilty in June 2025 to one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal money transmitting business and has been in federal custody since December 2024. The Justice Department said eight co-conspirators have pleaded guilty so far, including Jose Somarriba and ShengSheng He, who have already been sentenced.
According to court documents, Su was part of an international criminal network that induced U.S. victims to transfer funds to accounts controlled by co-conspirators, who then laundered the money through U.S. shell companies, international bank accounts and digital asset wallets. Overseas co-conspirators contacted victims through unsolicited social media interactions, telephone calls, text messages and online dating services to gain their trust, promoted fraudulent digital asset investments, and built fake websites resembling real cryptocurrency trading platforms so that victims sent in funds for investments that the scammers claimed were appreciating, when in fact the money had been stolen.
More than $36.9 million in victim funds were transferred from U.S. bank accounts controlled by the co-conspirators to a single account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas. Su and other co-conspirators directed the bank to convert the funds to the stablecoin Tether (USDT) and transfer them to a digital asset wallet controlled in Cambodia, where co-conspirators distributed the money to the leaders of scam centers throughout the region. The government identified 174 U.S. victims in total.
"New investment opportunities may sound intriguing, but they have a dark side: attracting criminals who, in this case, stole then laundered tens of millions of dollars from their victims," said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said the defendant and his co-conspirators had scammed 174 Americans out of their hard-earned money and that criminals in the digital age have found new ways to weaponize the internet for fraud. The case was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service's Global Investigative Operations Center, with assistance from Homeland Security Investigations and other agencies.
Related: Five Men Plead Guilty in Cambodia Scam-Center Crypto Fraud That Laundered More Than $36.9 Million
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于美国华盛顿的美国司法部总部罗伯特·肯尼迪大楼（资料照片）。APK 摄，CC BY 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons；联邦固定图库标准图。 / Photo: The Robert F. Kennedy Building, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington (file photo). Photo by APK, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; federal fixed-library image.
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