KuCoin has pled guilty to one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and has agreed to pay penalties of over $297 million, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a release on Tuesday.
“KuCoin avoided implementing required anti-money laundering policies designed to identify criminal actors and prevent illicit transactions,” U.S. Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon said in a statement.
“KuCoin was used to facilitate billions of dollars’ worth of suspicious transactions and to transmit potentially criminal proceeds, including proceeds from darknet markets and malware, ransomware, and fraud schemes,” the statement added.
As part of the guilty plea, KuCoin has agreed to exit the U.S. market for at least two years and two of the exchange’s founders, Chun “Michael” Gan and Ke “Eric” Tang, will also depart from the company.
KuCoin served approximately 1.5 million registered users who were located in the U.S., and earned at least approximately $184.5 million in fees from those U.S. registered users, the release said.
The release notes that KuCoin employees openly promoted that the exchange did not have a know-your-customer (KYC) program. It was only in August 2023 that KuCoin adopted a KYC process, but it wasn’t implemented on existing customers.
Gan and Tang, the exchange’s founders, have agreed to forfeit approximately $2.7 million in funds that were generated as a result of KuCoin’s operations in the U.S.
In a press release from KuCoin, Gan said he was stepping down from the exchange to ensure its continued success and he had no intent to violate any U.S. or international law.
KCS, KuCoin’s exchange token, is up 10% on-day, according to CoinGecko data, however the token is thinly traded.