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Under a federal non-prosecution agreement, the Wynn Las Vegas consented to pay $130 million in September 2024 for conspiring with unlicensed money-transmitting companies and neglecting to maintain sufficient anti-money-laundering (AML) protections. It was the biggest forfeiture ever placed on a casino in the United States.
The mechanisms underlying the misbehavior are now revealed by fresh information gleaned from a CNN investigation. This involves the involvement of certain Wynn VIP hosts in helping covert Chinese banks that may have ties to prostitution networks, drug cartels, and human trafficking organizations launder money.
A few federal lawsuits filed in San Diego against four Chinese nationals—Lei Zhang, Bing Han, Liang Zhou, and Fan Wang—based in Las Vegas were at the center of the plot.
According to court documents, all four entered guilty pleas by 2020 to running an unauthorized money-transfer company that mostly served Chinese gamblers who required US currency to play in Las Vegas casinos.
The Cash Pipeline
According to those documents, Zhang obtained large amounts of US cash from outside sources and distributed it to American gamblers. According to investigators CNN spoke with, the cash may have come from Mexican drug cartels, human smuggling networks, and prostitution operations.
The gamblers then used Chinese mobile banking apps to send a corresponding sum of yuan to accounts that Zhang or his cronies controlled. This made it possible for the transactions to get around Chinese capital-outflow regulations as well as US financial reporting requirements.
Zhang acknowledged that casino hosts at Wynn and other locations frequently introduced him to patrons. His sentencing document and Justice Department statements indicate that hosts occasionally received a piece of his commission and benefited from more cash play by high rollers.
According to phone records used in the CNN investigation, the Wynn hosts spoke with the guys hundreds of times every week.
According to Wang's related guilty plea filing, casino hosts usually presented him to patrons since they knew the gamers required money to continue gambling.
Sting in a Hotel Room
CNN spoke with authorities who said that in May 2019, an undercover agent dressed as a gambler set up a meeting with Zhang in a hotel room in Las Vegas.
Zhang showed up with a satchel and a lady investigators referred to as a “madam” in charge of prostitution.
Agents discovered four brick-sized piles of cash totaling about $150,000 when they entered the room. The woman allegedly brought some of the money from her prostitution company because she wanted to oversee the handoff, investigators told CNN.
Zhang was later compelled to forfeit $150K and given a 15-month prison sentence. According to DOJ announcements, the three others also consented to forfeit hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The federal investigation that led to Wynn's 2024 settlement was informed by evidence from the four Las Vegas instances, according to investigators. Prior wrongdoing from 2014, such as "flying money" transfers and proxy gaming schemes involving overseas customers, was also mentioned in the DOJ's deal.
Money from Drugs
US officials have cautioned that Mexican drug cartels prefer to use this type of clandestine banking, which is dominated by Chinese brokers, to dump large amounts of cash proceeds from fentanyl and other drugs. According to prosecutor Mark Pletcher, the underground banking issue costs "in the nine-figure range" every year.
According to Wynn, the corporation has now reinforced internal procedures, the behavior was historical, and the involved workers were fired. The operator also mentioned the creation of an independent oversight committee following the government inquiry and additional compliance staffers.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board penalized Wynn $5.5 million in May 2025 for state-level AML offenses related to the federal forfeiture.
