Deependra Bhusal, Cryptocurrency Money Laundering, Texas 2022

TYLER, Texas – A Texas man has been sentenced to federal prison for his role in a cryptocurrency money laundering conspiracy in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Brit Featherston.

Deependra Bhusal, 46, pleaded guilty on April 30, 2021, to conspiracy to commit money laundering and was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison today by U.S. District Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle.

According to information presented in court, Bhusal was involved in a multi-year money laundering conspiracy involving the laundering of criminal proceeds derived from various scams.

Bhusal’s role in the money laundering conspiracy was to open bank accounts and mailboxes that were used to receive and transact victim funds, to receive the victim funds, to engage in subsequent financial transactions, routinely structured in amounts under $10,000 in an effort to evade reporting requirements and to conceal the nature and source of the criminal proceeds, and to move the criminal proceeds to foreign co-conspirators.

Bhusal and his co-conspirators routinely exchanged the criminal proceeds for cryptocurrency and directed the cryptocurrency to wallets under the control of their foreign co-conspirators. In August 2020, Bhusal and his co-conspirators traveled to Longview, Texas, where they attempted to exchange approximately $450,000 in criminal proceeds for Bitcoin.

In the course of the operation, Bhusal was personally responsible for laundering $1,437,358.99 in criminal proceeds.

This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. The OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach.

This case is being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nathaniel C. Kummerfeld and L. Frank Coan, Jr.

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