A Danvers man was convicted of a Bitcoin conversion scam “no questions asked,” according to Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy.

Trung Nguyen, also known as “DCS420,” 48, was found guilty after a five-day trial of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transfer business. There was another charge of money laundering on which the jury did not convict him.

“Money laundering is the lifeblood of a wide range of criminal behavior,” Levy said in a statement.

Levy went on to say that money launderers, with Bitcoin’s blockchain technology in play, believe this is a new frontier for cleaning dirty money anonymously. This belief is unfounded, according to Levy.

The deliberate nature of Nguyen’s activities and his knowledge of the people he was dealing with were a key element of the illicit nature of his crime, other officials said.

“Nguyen deliberately created his money services business to evade banking regulations and circumvent financial safeguards that prevent illicit products from entering legitimate commerce. Our investigation proved that Nguyen knew he was working with criminals by accepting money from scam victims and a drug dealer,” said Michael J. Krol, Special Agent in Charge of HSI New England.

The fraudulent enterprise, led by Nguyen, allowed criminals, according to the release, to convert huge sums of money into Bitcoin to conceal what they had done to obtain the money.

Nguyen operated his money laundering scheme between September 2017 and October 2020 under the name National Vending LLC, according to officials. It accepted cash from customers and, for a fee, sent them Bitcoin.

Federal regulations required Nguyen to register his business with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). He did not do so, according to the statement.

Nguyen accepted about $250,000 in cash from someone who told him he was a meth dealer, authorities said. He also took money from scam victims in Kansas City, Connecticut and Massachusetts on separate occasions, officials note. The cash values ​​exchanged were $325,000, $60,000 and $60,000, respectively, according to the release.

Officials said the victims were tricked into converting money into Bitcoin, and Nguyen refused to file suspicious activity reports or currency transaction reports on any of those transactions.

Nguyen further hid his activity by using encrypted messaging apps to communicate with customers and splitting cash deposits of more than $10,000 into smaller deposits over time or between branches of the same bank, according to the responsible.

Nguyen also took a course he paid for to help him hide his affairs, officials say. It was suggested by this course that he develop “a business for which cash deposits across the country make sense” and that he “develop (his) cover story” to “create a list of your suppliers… fictional of course”, and “Don’t I say the word “Bitcoin”.

His sentence could be up to 20 years and up to a $500,000 fine for money laundering or twice the value of property involved in the transaction, officials said, and up to five years for wire business money without a license.