John Khuu, 29, of San Francisco, California, was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison for his role in a cryptocurrency money laundering conspiracy.
Acting U.S. Attorney Abe McGlothin, Jr., announced the sentence, which was handed down by U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker on March 12, 2025.
Khuu pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
According to court documents, Khuu conspired with others to launder proceeds from his drug trafficking organization through cryptocurrency. He illegally imported counterfeit pharmaceutical and MDMA (“ecstasy”) pills from Germany and distributed them across the United States, primarily on dark web markets (DWMs). Customers paid with Bitcoin (BTC), which Khuu and his co-conspirators converted to U.S. currency and laundered through numerous transactions and financial accounts.
Khuu was indicted in the Eastern District of Texas in May 2022 and in the Northern District of California in August 2022. He was arrested in Garden Grove, California, in August 2022.
This operation was part of Operation Crypto Runner, an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation.
The cases were investigated by the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and Homeland Security Investigations, San Francisco. Assistant U.S. Attorneys D. Ryan Locker and Nathaniel C. Kummerfeld for the Eastern District of Texas, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Bisesto for the Northern District of California, prosecuted the cases.
