New Delhi, Aug. 9 -- WASHINGTON - When Guren "Bobby" Zhou introduced himself to the financial world in June, he did so only briefly, identifying himself as "Mr. Bobby" from a company called Aqua 1 during a short audio stream on X. What followed was a $100 million purchase of cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's flagship digital-asset venture and the single largest publicly known investment in that enterprise at the time.

By the time Zhou's identity became known, the portrait that emerged bore little resemblance to the professional cryptocurrency investor he had implied himself to be. He was a failed hardwood flooring retailer from Britain who had been arrested in March 2021 on suspicion of money launderi...