Read the text, he transferred the money to Kraken, presumably to buy cryptocurrency that he then sent to the scammers.

According to the article, he first sent the money to Kraken to presumably purchase cryptocurrency there and was later convinced to move the cryptocurrency to a different Hong Kong based platform. The supposed platform in Hong Kong may have just been a front though.

My mistake. I had assumed that the first exchange was also a fake website put together by the scammers with no crypto behind it.