The Australian Federal Police has accused Changjiang Currency Exchange, which has 12 shop fronts across the nation, of being secretly run by an underworld money laundering syndicate.
The Long River syndicate is accused of laundering almost $229 million in illegal funds through the business in the past three years.
More than 300 officers on Wednesday conducted 20 raids across every mainland state and seized $50 million in luxury homes, vehicles and items as part of the AFP-led Operation Avarus-Nightwolf.
Four Chinese nationals and three Australians were arrested across Melbourne's eastern suburbs and charged over their alleged involvement in the syndicate.
They are a 37-year-old Balwyn man, a 40-year-old Glen Iris man, a 33-year-old Vermont woman, a man and woman from Kew, both 35, a 37-year-old Balwyn North man and a 38-year-old Balwyn woman.
The four men and three women are expected to face Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday.
The AFP has seized luxury homes and vehicles as part of a money laundering probe.
The probe was in part triggered by AFP investigators noticing that the exchange chain opened and updated new and existing shopfronts in the heart of Sydney during the city's COVID-19 lockdowns.
AFP Assistant Commissioner Stephen Dametto said it sent alarm bells ringing among money laundering investigators.
"It was just a gut feeling - it didn't feel right," he said.
"Many international students and tourists had returned home, and there was no apparent business case for Changjiang Currency Exchange to expand."
It is alleged the exchange chain, one of the largest independently owned remitters in the country, has turned over more than $10 billion in the past three financial years.
Most of the funds were legitimate but the AFP alleges the company simultaneously facilitated a system for organised criminals to secretly transfer unlawfully obtained money in and out of Australia.
In all, the business laundered $228,883,561 between 2020 and 2023, the AFP alleges.
It is alleged some of the laundered money was proceeds of crime, including from cyber-enabled scams, the trafficking of illicit goods and violent crimes.
The syndicate would coach its criminal customers on how to create fake business paperwork, such as false invoices and bank statements, police allege.
This allegedly allowed Changjiang Currency Exchange and its criminal customers to demonstrate that illegally gained money was from lawful sources if transfers came to authorities' attention.
The exchange chain pocketed higher fees for customers with unlawful funds and avoided tax liabilities on legitimate transactions and other income, the AFP alleges.
The mixing of legal and illicit funds allowed the company to transfer up to $100 million a day for customers in Australia and overseas, with the volume of transfers masking the alleged laundering of tainted funds.
Syndicate members allegedly amassed a significant amount of illegal wealth from their criminal activity.
"We allege they lived the high life by eating at Australia's most extravagant restaurants, drinking wine and sake valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, travelling on private jets, driving vehicles purchased for $400,000 and living in expensive homes, with one valued at more than $10 million," Assistant Commissioner Dametto said.
The syndicate also spent $200,000 each on fake passports, enabling members to flee if officers ever came knocking, police allege.
The AFP and its partners spent 14 months planning Long River's takedown.
Assistant Commissioner Dametto described it as a sophisticated and complex money laundering group, which had entrenched itself into the fabric of the financial services industry.
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