Responding to a money laundering-related civil recovery claim by the National Crime Agency (NCA) of the UK, a Chinese mother and her two UK-based sons will forfeit London properties worth over £1.6 million ($2.16m). One of the sons, Shuyu Cao, had come to the UK in 2012, as a student. The NCA identified a connection between Shuyu Cao and his ML convict Chinese national mother Fen Chen.
In 2017, Fen Chen had received a six-year-long prison sentence for her links to an Albanian drugs gang that paid more than £1.8 million ($2.43m) of illicitly-obtained money into high street banks in just 2 weeks. The NCA found that Chen made multiple cash deposits into Cao’s UK account during this period. As such, authorities had searched his London property in 2016. Here, they found over £60,000 ($80,988) in cash.
Further investigation revealed that bank accounts owned by Shuyu Cao and his brother Shucheng Cao had received multiple large and suspicious deposits through money service bureaus. Shuyu Cao used a fraction of the illicit funds to purchase properties in London. The NCA is now recovering two of these properties.
Source: National Crime Agency, UK