US Charges Two in $43 Million Pig-Butchering Money Laundering Scheme

U.S. prosecutors charged Zhuoying Chen and Haojie Zhang for allegedly running a New York-based money laundering network that processed proceeds from cyber-enabled investment fraud scams. An unsealed indictment alleges the pair managed more than a dozen people in Queens and Brooklyn between 2020 and 2022, using roughly 140 bank accounts linked to about 45 shell companies to move at least $43 million before transferring the funds to bank accounts in China.

Authorities said the underlying scams used social media and messaging platforms to build trust with victims, steer them into fake investment opportunities, and extract additional payments by showing fabricated profits, a pattern commonly associated with pig-butchering fraud. The charges come amid a broader U.S. crackdown on investment scams after the FBI reported that such schemes accounted for 49% of scam-related incidents in 2025 and caused $8.6 billion in reported losses.