TL;DR
- Singapore sentences Chinese national to two years for $6.9 million crypto theft.
- Zhang laundered stolen funds through Tornado Cash to erase the transaction trail.
- SafeX discovered the breach via a low-balance alert on its wallets.
A Singapore court sentenced Zhang Xinghua, a 38-year-old Chinese national, to two years in prison for his role in the theft of approximately $6.9 million in cryptocurrency from the SafeX exchange. Zhang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit unauthorized access to computer systems and to handling the proceeds of criminal conduct — two charges prosecutors backed with documented transactions routed through the crypto mixer Tornado Cash.
The case began with a breakdown in business relations between King Coder — the company where the conspirators worked — and DTL, the parent company of SafeX. According to prosecutors, one member of the group, Chen Chong Xin, who remains at large, accessed SafeX’s digital vaults without authorization on three separate occasions between June and August 2025, moving the full stolen amount into multiple external wallets.
Zhang entered the operation at the laundering stage. Prosecutors documented that he deposited more than $1.6 million across two transactions through Tornado Cash between July and August 2025, using the mixer to erase the trail of the stolen funds. Without police intervention, Zhang would have collected more than $886,000 in cryptocurrency as his share of the proceeds.
The case surfaced in August 2025 when SafeX’s internal systems triggered a low-balance alert on its wallets. The platform ran internal technical checks, filed a police report, and authorities arrested Zhang within days.
Court proceedings also recorded that Zhang’s wife received a portion of the stolen funds through her Binance account, through which he later made a partial restitution of approximately $95,000 in bitcoin.
Tornado Cash Returns to the Center of the Global Regulatory Debate
Singapore authorities managed to seize or freeze around $2.1 million linked to the case. Even so, approximately $4.8 million remains beyond the reach of Singaporean jurisdiction, spread across private wallets and virtual asset service providers operating in other countries. One alleged accomplice’s case still awaits resolution before the courts.
The use of Tornado Cash as a laundering tool reignites a debate regulators across multiple countries keep unresolved. The protocol’s founder, Roman Storm, received a conviction last year in the United States for operating an unlicensed money transmitter, and federal prosecutors recently requested a retrial on more serious money laundering and sanctions evasion charges that a previous jury failed to decide.
At the same time, the US Treasury lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash in March 2025 and published a report acknowledging that mixers may carry legitimate uses for users seeking lawful financial privacy. The tension between both positions defines the uncertain regulatory environment in which these tools continue to operate.
