Breaking News: Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao to Serve 4 Months in Prison

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, was sentenced to four months in prison on Tuesday following a guilty plea to breaking US money-laundering regulations at his company.

The 47-year-old Zhao was sentenced by United States District Judge Richard Jones of Seattle, who denied the prosecution's request for a three-year sentence.

Zhao's attorneys requested a probationary sentence for their client, stating that the former executive "deeply regrets his offense" and has shown that he has accepted responsibility for his actions.

Mr. Changpeng Zhao is a first-time offender who is 47 years old. His three guiding principles in life have been serving the greater good, developing technology (particularly Binance), and being devoted to his family, according to his attorneys.

According to The Verge, Zhao's attorney, William Burck, also mentioned that because of Zhao's fame, wealth, and government cooperation, he is at risk in certain security facilities.

In November, Zhao, also known as "CZ," entered a guilty plea to a single count of neglecting to implement mandatory anti-money-laundering measures. After Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion to resolve the related allegations, Zhao resigned.

More than 1.5 million virtual currency trades worth almost $900 million that broke US sanctions were approved by Binance, including transactions involving Iran, al-Qaeda, and the Qassam Brigades of Hamas.

According to US officials, Zhao purposefully turned a blind eye to transactions that facilitated the illegal drug trade, child sex abuse, and "terrorism."

Before US District Judge Richard A. Jones issued the sentence, Zhao uttered the words, "I failed here."" I apologize for my mistake and sincerely regret it. CZ acknowledged his mistakes; however, prosecutors told the judge a tough sentence would send a clear signal to other would-be criminals.

CZ now becomes the second prominent cryptocurrency CEO to receive a prison sentence after Sam Bankman-Fried and the richest person to ever serve time in a federal prison in the U.S., according to Bloomberg.

Lewis A. Kaplan, a judge in New York, sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried, the creator of the now-bankrupt FTX exchange, which crashed in the fall of 2022, to 25 years in prison for embezzling eight billion dollars from clients and ordered him to pay the government $11 billion on Thursday, March 28.

Since its founding in 2017, Binance has dominated a large portion of the cryptocurrency trading market, making its CEO, Zhao, a billionaire. After a crackdown on the crypto sector by Beijing, Zhao moved Binance operations to other countries.

This month, Binance's newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Richard Teng, said that the company was closely working with regulators and had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on compliance.

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