It started with a project officially known as “Operation Couch Cushions.” Poloniex’s digital architecture was archaic and strangely programmed, so it became common for bits of money to get trapped in digital crevices of the old exchange, as though buried in the deep recesses of a sofa. Employees called traces of lost crypto “dust,” and eventually, engineers discovered a gold mine. Over the years, customers accidentally deposited Bitcoin to wallets only designed to accept a popular crypto called Tether. The Bitcoin was blocked out of the wallets, undelivered, in a kind of suspended animation. It was unrecoverable by users, seemingly forgotten for years.
By 2021, these slivers of Bitcoin, added together, were worth serious money. When Sun learned about the dust, he ordered engineers to gather it.
All told, it was 230 Bitcoin, or a little over $10 million in today’s value.
Sun is the sole owner of Poloniex, he would be responsible anyway. “It’s definitely a crime to convert customer funds for personal use.”
Sun’s desire to bring his parents along suggests Malta could be his final destination if he gets caught in the crosshairs of regulators in the US or China.
A potential explanation for Sun’s excessive number of bank accounts came from a former close associate of Sun’s, who told me he looks for ways to pay as little in taxes as possible. As one former employee succinctly put it, “He thought taxes were stupid.
When the FBI agent finally arrived, they asked about all sorts of employees in the US and Beijing, about rumors of beautiful models who flew around the world with Sun and whether he did business transactions under the table. The former employee got the impression that agents were interested in potential tax evasion. They even called Sun an “IRS criminal".
“It sounds like you really want to help us.” To which the former employee said, “Oh yeah, because I want to screw him.”
The grand jury is exploring a long list of potential charges. According to the subpoena (one of which was shown to me), they are: wire fraud, conspiracy or intent to commit wire fraud, swindling, money laundering, spending the spoils of a criminal enterprise, failure to register a security and lying about it, aiding and abetting a crime, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Sun left the States right before the pandemic struck and has never returned.