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WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson is cracking down on a popular texting app that he says is helping fuel the fentanyl epidemic.
In a Monday announcement, Jackson and five other attorneys general said they’ve sent a letter to the leaders of the app “WeChat” for allegedly playing a role in fentanyl money laundering.
“We wanna hit the cartels where it hurts,” Jackson told WECT. “And where it hurts is this money laundering, this digital pipeline that has opened up.”
The Chinese-based app, with over a billion users around the world and thousands in North Carolina, is designed to support encrypted communication between people, and also has an integrated payment system. But criminals are using that payment system, Jackson said, to launder drug money.
WeChat is at the center of a triangle of criminal activity between the United States, China, and cartels, Jackson said. The cartels move fentanyl into the U.S., and the sales money then goes to China. Laundered money and goods then move “discreetly” from China back to the cartels, Jackson said, with communication and money transfers often going through WeChat.
“The motive for most crime is money. If you want to reduce the crime, you reduce the money. The way we reduce the money here is focusing on WeChat,” he said.
The attorney general said he’s given WeChat 30 days to identify potential solutions to the issue. The app has “yet to adequately address the exploitation of its platform by criminal actors,” the announcement said.
A comment request from a WeChat representative wasn’t immediately returned.
“We want them to do enough to change the reputation that WeChat has, because right now, WeChat has a reputation as a safe haven for facilitating money laundering,” Jackson said.
The fentanyl crisis has affected communities around the state and country; with roughly six per day, overdoses from the drug are now the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45 in North Carolina, according to the North Carolina Department of Justice.
Monday’s announcement also cited several recent investigations and criminal cases that involved WeChat being used in fentanyl-related money laundering:
- “The 2021 conviction of Xizhi Li, who managed an international criminal network using WeChat to coordinate bulk cash transfers between Chinese banks and drug cartels.
- Operation Chem Capture (2023), in which eight companies and 12 individuals were indicted for trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals, with transactions coordinated through WeChat.
- Collaboration between Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and Chinese laundering networks, which regularly use WeChat to facilitate cash pickups, currency swaps, and repatriation of drug proceeds.
- A recent 2024 federal indictment in South Carolina, charging three defendants with using WeChat to communicate in order to launder proceeds from fentanyl sales as part of an international conspiracy.”