Taiwan jails BitShine founder for 22 years over $75m stablecoin laundering scheme
Shilin court convicts Shi Qiren on 485 counts after cash-to-crypto storefront network defrauded 1,500 victims, raising fresh AML questions for Europe.
A Taiwanese court has sentenced Shi Qiren, the man behind the BitShine crypto exchange, to 22 years in prison for orchestrating a fraud and money laundering operation that authorities say moved more than NT$2.3 billion (roughly $75 million) through a network of cash-for-crypto storefronts. The Shilin District Court in Taipei convicted Shi on 485 counts of aggravated fraud and money laundering, delivering one of the harshest sentences yet handed down in the island’s crypto enforcement history.
Prosecutors had sought a 25-year term. Shi received an additional 16 months for running virtual asset services without the anti-money laundering registration required under Taiwanese law, on top of the fraud sentence.
A cash-to-crypto network built on storefronts
Between January 2024 and April 2025, Shi’s operation — trading as BitShine and BiXiang, both fronts for a company called Bixiang Technology — ran 45 physical storefronts across Taiwan. Recruits at these locations bought crypto tokens using cash, which the network then funnelled through USDT transfers to obscure the money’s origin and destination, according to prosecutors.
More than 1,500 victims were defrauded in the scheme. Estimates of the financial damage vary slightly between the illicit profits generated and the losses suffered by victims: prosecutors put the illicit proceeds at roughly NT$1.27 billion, with reported dollar equivalents ranging between $39 million and $41 million depending on the conversion used, against a total laundered sum of around NT$2.3 billion.
The court ordered forfeiture of NT$43.73 million in crime proceeds. Earlier in the investigation, authorities had already seized NT$60.49 million in cash, 647,000 USDT and an unspecified quantity of bitcoin from the network.
Why the case resonates beyond Taiwan
The BitShine case is a textbook illustration of the typology regulators in Europe have been racing to close off: physical, cash-based crypto outlets that sit outside conventional banking oversight and rely on stablecoins to move value quickly and anonymously. Under the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Regulation, due to bring a single rulebook and a new EU-level AML authority into force from 2027, cash transactions above set thresholds and unregistered crypto-asset service providers are explicit targets.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has likewise tightened registration requirements for crypto firms and has previously ordered the shutdown of unregistered cash-to-crypto ATMs, citing similar laundering risks. Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission has been building out its own virtual asset service provider regime since 2021, but the scale of the BitShine network — operating for over a year across 45 sites before prosecution — points to persistent gaps in monitoring cash-intensive crypto retail outlets even in jurisdictions with formal registration rules on the books.
For institutional investors and compliance teams tracking stablecoin flows, the case adds to a growing body of enforcement evidence linking USDT specifically to large-scale laundering operations, a pattern regulators in Brussels and London are citing as justification for tighter travel-rule enforcement and stablecoin issuer oversight.
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