“The crime was the product.”
Binance and Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to running the world’s largest money laundering conspiracy and are paying more than $4 billion in fines. The exchange spent years claiming it did no U.S. business while tens of percent of its book came from the U.S. Its own Chief Compliance Officer wrote that Binance was “operating as a fking unlicensed security exchange in the U.S. bro.” Compliance was a press release. The chat logs were the business plan.