Good morning. In January 2023, a 67-year-old man in North Carolina received a text message from a woman named Jeanie. She said she lived in Miami and worked in fashion design. Though they never met in person, an online romance quickly blossomed.

By August, Jeanie had disappeared with $3.4 million of the man’s savings—a textbook example of “pig butchering,” in which scammers build victims’ trust and walk away with their money.

What is pig butchering? Pig butchering scams have become a growing problem, taking billions of dollars from Americans and others in recent years. They are called “pig butchering” because the swindlers “fatten” up their victims by building trust over weeks or months, then “butcher” them by taking their money and disappearing.

Links to Cambodia: But the North Carolina case had a twist: Some of the funds landed in the hands of a Cambodia-based company called Huione, according to Chainalysis, a company that analyzes the movement of cryptocurrencies and tracked the money.

Now a U.S. target: Huione is now a target for U.S. investigators, who have accused it of being one of a number of companies abetting the spread of pig butchering and are trying to cut off its access to American banks.

What do these companies do? The companies, which provide financial and other services, don’t conduct the scams themselves. Instead, like a Craigslist for the criminal underground, they serve as one-stop shops for swindlers, providing a marketplace where merchants sell everything from lists of potential victims to technology for creating fake personas online to money-laundering services. The marketplaces collect fees along the way. 

See: FinCEN Wants to Cut Off Alleged Cambodian Money Laundering

Crypto company founder charged with money laundering, sanctions evasion.

The Justice Department charged a cryptocurrency executive in New York with illegally funneling some $530 million through the U.S. financial system on behalf of foreign customers.

Prosecutors on Monday alleged Evita founder and President Iurii Gugnin, also known as George Goognin and Iurii Mashukov, helped foreign customers with accounts at sanctioned Russian banks funnel cryptocurrency through the U.S. financial system and convert the funds into dollars or other fiat currencies. They also said he eventually made payments through bank accounts in Manhattan on behalf of the individuals.

Edward Jones, LPL, other firms settle accusations of charging excessive commissions.

Five brokerage firms, including Edward Jones and LPL Financial, have agreed to pay a combined $9.3 million in fines to settle state securities regulators’ allegations that they charged unreasonable commissions to retail customers on small dollar stock trades, Barron’s reports.

Edward Jones, LPL, RBC, Stifel Financial and TD Ameritrade are also required to ensure they have safeguards in place to prevent them from resuming excessive charges, according to The North American Securities Administrators Association. Nasaa, an organization of state securities regulators, announced the settlement Monday.

• Ahead of U.S.-China talks in London, President Trump authorized Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s team to negotiate away recent restrictions on the sale of a wide variety of technology and other products to China, according to people familiar with the matter.
   
• The Federal Trade Commission is asking some of the world’s largest ad companies for information as part of an investigation into whether advertising and advocacy groups violated antitrust laws by coordinating boycotts of certain sites, including Elon Musk’s X.
   
• The Alexander brothers have filed a defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The Real Deal, seeking $500 million in damages for what they claim is a “smear campaign” by the real-estate trade magazine.
   
• The founder of sexual-wellness company OneTaste was convicted Monday of criminal conspiracy for a yearslong effort to exploit employees to grow her business.
   
• A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits brought by actor and director Justin Baldoni against actress Blake Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and the New York Times, the latest wrinkle in a PR battle-turned-legal saga that has gripped Hollywood.
   
• China said Tuesday that it would extend a yearlong probe into pork imports from the European Union, as Beijing seeks to bolster ties with the 27-member block amid heightened trade tensions with the U.S.

Businesses are bingeing on crypto, dialing up the market’s risks.

Buying bitcoin is becoming a fad for a growing list of companies that have nothing to do with crypto but believe digital assets can boost their stocks. The problem, some industry insiders say: This could expose crypto to new risks, amplifying selloffs in moments of turbulence.

The approach has been pioneered by executives such as bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor, who has turned his software company Strategy into a warehouse for the digital currency. Other companies are following suit.

Solar Bellwether’s bankruptcy shows green energy’s woes under Trump.

One of America’s largest rooftop-solar installation businesses filed for chapter 11 Monday, a stark illustration of the strains haunting the U.S. clean-energy sector as shifting federal policies shake investor confidence.

Sunnova Energy International, once a poster child for America’s residential renewable energy boom with a market value above $5 billion and more than 400,000 customers at its peak, plans to sell or wind down its assets in bankruptcy. Now a penny stock with $8.9 billion in debt, Sunnova in recent months struggled to take on new business providing solar-panel installations, energy storage and financing for residential customers.

• Tech Industry Fights to Save Clean-Energy Tax Credits

• A Chinese aircraft carrier is conducting drills hundreds of miles south of Japan’s main island, Japanese officials said Monday, venturing into waters that could be strategically vital in a conflict with the U.S. in the Pacific.
   
• Taiwan’s exports resilience was on full display in May, growing at the fastest pace in nearly 15 years on likely frontloading as tariff uncertainty continues.
   
• Taiwan has embarked on a mission to purge any allies of Beijing from its civil service in an escalating battle against China’s influence—vetting hundreds of thousands of workers and threatening to revoke the citizenship of those found to be Chinese citizens.
   
• Canada plans to boost military spending this year, aiming to catch up to its lagging NATO commitments and try to placate President Trump amid sensitive trade talks.
   
• Soup, black beans and sliced pineapple could all soon become more expensive because of one particular reason: their cans.
   
• A visible emblem of ire has emerged from the protests in Los Angeles: graffitied, burning Waymos.
   
• The U.K.’s labor market cooled in the three months to April, offering reassurance to Bank of England policymakers despite the level still being well above that required to return inflation to target any time soon.
   
• Sales in U.K. stores slowed in May as consumers reduced their spending on nonessential items, the latest report from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG showed.

• Flare-ups continued across Los Angeles overnight following a day of mostly peaceful demonstrations over immigration enforcement that saw the Trump administration take the rare step of deploying roughly 700 active-duty Marines to the area.
   
• Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting itself into two stand-alone publicly traded entertainment companies, separating its HBO Max streaming service, movie studio and TV production business from its cable networks.
   
• Disney has reached a deal with Comcast’s NBCUniversal to settle a long-running dispute over the fair value of Hulu, paying an additional $438.7 million to buy out its rival’s stake.
   
• Ken Moelis, the dealmaker who got his start with Michael Milken and launched an eponymous investment bank in 2007, is planning to step down as chief executive officer of Moelis & Co.
   
• Democrats are launching a multimillion-dollar effort, helped by megadonor George Soros, to turn Texas into a political battleground after suffering through decades of electoral losses in the nation’s second-largest state.

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