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Frank
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Police have revealed how a Chinese money laundering scheme was responsible for so much cash going into some ATMs in Melbourne that the branches were forced to schedule extra pick-ups to deal with the notes.
Sergeant David Crowe, who led Operation Taipan, said the trio offered $5000 to each international student in exchange for their bank details. These students were recruited by a “Chinese diaspora app”.
“They were advertising in there saying, ‘Have you finished your degree, you’ve got an Aussie licence, you’ve got Aussie bank accounts, you don’t need it anymore’,” Mr Crowe said. They amassed nearly 220 bank accounts used to receive and send cash deposited in ATMs across Melbourne.
The criminals used these accounts to open hundreds of additional subaccounts.
Police revealed they camped out to surveil ATMs across Melbourne’s southeast and close-in on a Chinese money laundering syndicate.
At its peak, the money laundering syndicate run by the men was so large and well established it accounted for nearly 16 per cent of cash being deposited across Victoria.
Police noted so much cash was going into some banks in Melbourne the branches were forced to schedule extra cash pick-ups to deal with the piles of notes.
An Austrac executive, ‘Natasha’, who appears in the podcast, reveals the criminals took advantage of Intelligence Deposit Machines, a new kind of ATM technology. These allowed huge cash deposits in the dead of night to avoid entering branches.
“I think it blew us away just how much money we could see being deposited into the ATMs,” Natasha said.
Commonwealth Bank was hit with a $700m fine by Austrac over its smart ATMs after criminals separately used them to launder cash.
The Victoria Police podcast reveals investigators discovered the men were using the cash and converting it into cryptocurrency.
One Binance account held by Wang held $39m in stablecoins.
Police noted while none of the men had jobs, only one bragged about his unexplained wealth: Liu. This included flaunting a $2000 “bird shirt” from Louis Vuitton and driving luxury vehicles like a 2019 Porsche 911 Carrera, Toyota LandCruiser Sahara, BMW X5, and BMW X7.
Mr Crowe noted one phone intercept with Liu’s father in China heard him brag he needed $30,000 a week to sustain his lifestyle. “‘I’ve got to keep up appearances. I’ve got to, you know, look rich and look successful. And what’s a bloke supposed to do other than money launder these days?’ He was saying all these things,” Mr Crowe recalled.
Another officer, Detective Acting Inspector Andrew Beans, revealed Liu was using the cash to fund a property empire buying a string of sites across Melbourne in all-cash deals.
All three men were sentenced in 2024, with Liu facing five years and six months jail after pleading guilty to charges of dealing with $33.65m in proceeds of crime.
Zhou got three years and four months, after dealing with $30.14m in crime proceeds, while Wang was given three years and nine months for his role dealing with $33m.
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