Boliang Liu and Tao Zhou: Melbourne money launders jailed after moving more than $30 million

The owner of a Chinese money remittance business has been jailed after admitting he handled an “eye-watering” amount of money over a 15-month period. Boliang Liu, 37, appeared in the Victorian County Court on Wednesday where he was jailed on money-laundering charges for dealing with more than $33.6 million. The former real-estate agent once boasted he could move up to $2m a week and earnt $50,000 in commission “when business was busy”. Liu appeared in court alongside syndicate “money runner” Tao Zhou, 41, who was jailed on similar charges after pleading guilty to handling $30m — either transferred into his accounts or deposited by Zhou into ATMs. The duo were arrested in October 2021 in what authorities heralded as the end of “one of Australia’s largest ever money laundering operations”. Handing down their sentences, Judge Michael Cahill said money received by the syndicate was exchanged for Chinese Yuan and deposited in clients’ overseas accounts between July 2020 and October 2021. Zhou was captured on CCTV depositing cash from a backpack into ATMs in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, often taking more than an hour as each transaction was under $10,000 to avoid reporting requirements. The court was told Liu’s father in China once speculated the funds were “Russian black money”, to which Liu said; “I never ask, save the trouble”. “We don’t worry where the s--t is from,” he said in the intercepted call. Judge Cahill told the two men he was not sentencing as if they knew where the money came from. “Here the sums you both dealt with are eye-watering,” he said. “It appears you were suspicious as to the source of the funds but indifferent as to the provenance.” Zhou was arrested with $180,000 cash in his backpack while police seized more than $913,000 alongside a luxury car and luxury watches from Liu’s Burwood home. Liu who Judge Cahill described as the “principal” of the syndicate, was jailed for five years and six months on four charges of dealing with money reasonably suspected to be the proceeds of crime. Zhou, who the court heard was a subordinate and was paid small commissions, was jailed for three years and six months. Zhou was also jailed for one year and nine months after he was arrested while on bail for further fraud in July 2022. He had set up a consultancy business, charging dozens of overseas credit cards more than $100,000 in two days before the transactions pinged as suspicious and payments were suspended. Of 253 transactions, cardholders, mostly from Singapore, disputed 241 as fraud. Both men are likely to face deportation once their sentences are complete, the court was told.