On Monday, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that KuCoin has admitted to operating as an unlicensed money transmitting business and has agreed to pay a penalty of over $297 million.
According to US Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon, KuCoin failed to implement necessary anti-money laundering measures to prevent illegal activities on their platform, resulting in the facilitation of billions of dollars’ worth of suspicious transactions.
As part of the plea, KuCoin will no longer operate in the US market for a minimum of two years and its founders, Chun “Michael” Gan and Ke “Eric” Tang, will also leave the company.
The exchange had approximately 1.5 million registered users in the US and made an estimated $184.5 million in fees from them.
