Danielle Sassoon, an attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that KuCoin, a global cryptocurrency exchange, violated U.S. anti-money laundering laws by failing to implement proper compliance measures. This failure allowed the platform to facilitate illicit transactions. The statement was made in a press release on January 27.
"For years, KuCoin avoided implementing required anti-money laundering policies designed to identify criminal actors and prevent illicit transactions," said Danielle R. Sassoon, according to U.S. Department of Justice. "As a result, 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. Today's guilty plea and penalties show the cost of refusing to follow these laws and allowing unlawful activity to continue."
According to the press release, KuCoin, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and agreed to pay nearly $300 million in penalties. Sassoon said KuCoin failed to implement mandatory anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) programs, enabling billions of dollars in suspicious transactions linked to darknet markets, ransomware, and fraud schemes.
The guilty plea requires KuCoin to exit the U.S. market for at least two years. Its indicted co-founders, Chun Gan and Ke Tang, will no longer be involved in the company’s operations. KuCoin’s failure to comply with U.S. financial laws resulted in $184.5 million in forfeited funds and an additional $112.9 million criminal fine, with its founders agreeing to forfeit $2.7 million each. The case was investigated by the El Dorado Task Force of Homeland Security Investigations, with prosecution led by the Illicit Finance & Money Laundering Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Other cryptocurrency exchanges have invested heavily in compliance measures to strengthen their AML and KYC programs. Coinbase committed $50 million as part of a $100 million settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services, agreeing to enhance its compliance systems over two years. Similarly, Binance increased its compliance investment in 2023 to $213 million—a 35% rise from the previous year—which included hiring 170 new compliance staff and integrating AI-driven monitoring tools.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Sassoon is the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York overseeing all federal prosecutions and civil litigation in the district. She leads a staff of approximately 450 legal professionals and has played a key role in high-profile cases including those against Samuel Bankman-Fried and Lawrence Ray. A graduate of Harvard College (2008) and Yale Law School (2011), she previously clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and has received multiple honors including the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Criminal Investigation (2024).
KuCoin is a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2017 offering services such as spot trading, margin trading, peer-to-peer fiat trading, futures trading, and staking while supporting over 900 digital assets. As of January 2025, KuCoin serves 38 million users across more than 200 countries and regions according to their website.
