A fintech company in the United States has pleaded guilty to laundering $160 million to Nigeria. US Department of Justice in a statement said Ping Express "transferred millions of dollars from the U.S. to Africa has admitted that it failed to adequately guard against money laundering." U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas…A fintech company in the United States has pleaded guilty to laundering $160 million to Nigeria.
Ping’s IT/ Business Development Manager, Aleoghena Okhumale, pleaded guilty to knowingly transmitting illegally-derived funds. The Dallas-based company they owned and operated — Ping Express US LLC — faces five years of probation and a fine as high as $500,000 after pleading guilty to a similar charge, while another executive received a 42-month sentence.
According to court documents, DoJ said the company was licensed to transmit money but was not licensed to conduct currency exchange – charged U.S. customers a fee to remit money to beneficiaries in Nigeria and other African nations.By law, Ping was required to report any suspicious transactions to regulators. In plea papers, it admitted that it failed to file a single report over a three-year period, despite a significant amount of suspicious customer activity.
Ping also admitted that it conducted money transmission business in states in which it was not licensed to do so, including Nevada, New Jersey, Utah, West Virginia, and Connecticut. The company admitted it failed to seek sufficient details about the sources or purposes of the funds involved in the transactions, or the customers initiating the transmissions.
Hmmm