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Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, was released from a California correctional facility on Friday after being held in federal custody for failures that enabled cybercriminals and terrorist groups to freely trade on the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
Zhao sentence resulted from a federal investigation that discovered Binance had failed to block numerous criminal operations involving cybercriminals and terrorists alike. He has been acquitted of charges that he funded two suspects through his company address while they traded cryptocurrencies.
Zhao pleaded guilty in November to charges of not having a proper anti-money laundering program to regulate the virtual currency exchange Binance, which was founded in Shanghai in 2017 but has since relocated to other countries and regions and handles trillions of dollars in trades each year.
According to Bureau of Prisons spokesman Scott Taylor, Zhao was released from a halfway house in Long Beach, California, where he had been held since June.
During his plea, Zhao agreed to pay a $50 million luxury fee and to step down from any executive positions at Binance. The company had to pay the US government a fine of nearly $4.3 billion, making it one of the largest fines ever imposed in America. Nonetheless, Zhao still owns an estimated 90% of Binance and is the world’s 25th richest person, with a net worth of $61 billion, according to Forbes.
Following his release, Zhao announced his next move, Giggle Academy, a new educational platform that reportedly has no revenue at the moment. With all of that out of the way, he can now focus on this initiative, which is currently recruiting new employees.
