Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, the self-claimed infamous “Crocodile of Wall Street” couple, were charged with trying to launder funds taken in a massive hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016. According to the latest development, though, the two are still negotiating a possible plea deal. Lichtenstein and Morgan were due...Read More
The government of Kazakhstan reportedly plans to put local companies working with digital assets under its regulatory scope. According to a proposed bill, those entities will have to give detailed information about their crypto operations to the country’s financial watchdogs to prove they have no connections to money-laundering schemes. Kazakhstan May Tighten Its Crypto Rules...Read More
The American authorities have accused the Baltimore resident – Ryan Farace – of laundering2,933 BTC between October 2019 and April 2021. Interestingly, the man was sent to jail in 2018 and has presumably executed the criminal activities from behind bars. ‘Xanaxman’ Dealing with Bitcoin Even from Prison According to The Baltimore Sun, officials of the...Read More
Less than a year after Chainalysis placed BitMEX into its “high risk” cryptocurrency exchanges zone, the company has reversed its decision. The analytics company has conducted an internal review of the derivatives exchanges, which has strived to improve its AML compliance lately. BitMEX faced extreme scrutiny last year when most of its executives at the...Read More
The British police confiscated £180 million or about $250 million worth of digital assets as part of a thorough investigation for money laundering. The operation was marked as the largest seizure ever executed in the United Kingdom. Breaking The Record According to a recent Reuters report, the Met’s Economic Crime Command made one of the...Read More
Chinese authorities have arrested 1,100 suspects who allegedly used cryptocurrency to launder funds for telecommunications network fraud activities. China Continues Crackdown on Crypto The Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday (June 9, 2021) announced that authorities cracked down on a group of people believed to be running an illegal criminal gang. According to the announcement,...Read More
This allows users to create trustless atomic swaps between the two cryptocurrencies without having to route through a centralized exchange service. Monero’s Privacy Mechanisms Monero’s ring signature system draws anonymity from a minimum ring size. Receivers are protected via stealth addresses, and funds within the ring are indistinguishable from each other. The minimum ring size...Read More
Amid the renewed anti-Bitcoin remarks ascribed to mainstream finance stakeholders, reports have emerged showing banks in Australia working in cahoots with violent South American cocaine cartels. Despite aspersions to the contrary, the crypto market continues to account for an insignificant proportion of global financial crimes. Australian Banks Funelling Dirty Money for Drug Cartels According to...Read More
Janet Yellen is keeping true to form as a crypto critic and has linked cryptocurrencies to terrorist financing and money laundering. Meanwhile, another report has emerged showing that virtual currencies only account for an insignificant proportion of global financial crimes. Yellen Espouses Well-Worn Crypto FUD Speaking during her virtual confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate,...Read More
As Bitcoin cools from its recent all-time high, HSBC has become the latest banking giant to restrict what its customers can invest in by preventing them from transferring any profits from crypto exchanges to their bank accounts.ban According to a recent report in The Sunday Times, HSBC has blocked transactions to or from crypto exchanges...Read More
Bitcoin’s public and pseudo-anonymous nature has reduced its preference for laundering cash. However, folks still ‘try their best’ to route money using BTC. And often fail. In one such case, justice authorities awarded a prison sentence to a couple from Hilversum, the Netherlands, for moving million euros through bitcoin. Bitcoin Laundering Hustle Busted; 2532 BTC...Read More
October is off to an interesting start, as news of charges against BitMEX by the CFTC and DOJ come to light – with the arrest of Arthur Hayes and three co-owners of the BitMEX exchange. The exchange that handles over $1.5 billion of trades each day, has been charged by the CFTC for operating an...Read More
With the recent coronavirus spread and its overall effect on the global economy, some people believe the powers that be are preparing a financial reset. During these times, a number of bitcoiners think a bitcoin-induced form of fiat currency demonetization will take place, otherwise known as ‘hyperbitcoinization.’ However, a few speculators believe digital assets in...Read More
Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA), ’Finansinspektionen’, has fined Swedbank a record sum of 4 billion Swedish krona ($386M) for breaching anti-money laundering regulations on a large scale. Around $5.8 billion had been funneled between suspected accounts in Swedbank and Danske Bank in the Baltics, the latter already fined large amounts for previous money-laundering activities. Also...Read More
A recent report claims that criminals primarily use cryptocurrencies for money-laundering in Latin America. Most countries in the region lack serious security measures leading to exuberant thefts executed by organized criminal groups. LATAM’s Dark Side Compiled by the cyber intelligence company IntSights, the report went in-depth on Latin America’s involvement with illegal financial activities. More...Read More
In November last year, the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, UPbit, was hacked. The perpetrators took approximately $50 million worth of Ethereum. A new report shows that $3.2 of the stolen funds is already laundered using small transactions towards numerous other exchanges. $3.2 M Of ETH Laundered During November in 2019, Cryptopotato reported that the popular...Read More
The Supreme Administrative Court of Greece has suspended a decision to extradite the alleged BTC-e operator Alexander Vinnik. The temporary measure has been imposed to allow the review of an appeal against the extradition. The Russian national, accused of laundering billions of dollars through the now defunct cryptocurrency exchange, started a new hunger strike last...Read More
It has been a while since an update on Alexander Vinnik was provided. The alleged operator of money laundering exchange BTC-E will seemingly be extradited after all. This tug-of-war between different jurisdictions has been ongoing for some time now. Bonjour, Alexander Vinnik Vinnik was originally arrested in Greece, yet Russia demanded his extradition. Not too...Read More
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading critic of the current Kremlin administration, has attracted a serious amount of cryptocurrency in the form of anonymous donations for his corruption-combatting NGO. The digital coins collected since the beginning of this year have amounted to well over $700,000 at current prices. Also read: Russian Tax Authority Registers Crypto as Part...Read More
With stricter new regulations on the horizon for the crypto space around the world, Australians have found that it’s actually their traditional financial institutions that have been breaching well-established anti-money laundering rules and other industry standards this year. Westpac, one of the country’s largest banks, is now under investigation for millions of purported violations of...Read More
The Onecoin scam, a multi-level Ponzi scheme that acquired $4 billion from investors has been falling apart at the seams. Criminal proceedings have started against Onecoin leaders and one alleged associate who was found guilty of laundering $400 million has asked a New York judge for more time to process an acquittal motion. Additionally, according...Read More
A man who created his own Bitcoin ATM has pleaded guilty of money laundering and related crimes. Kunal Kalra, a resident of Westwood, California, used his machine and other means to clean as much as $25 million between 2015 and 2017.Court documents claim that Kalra also exchanged Bitcoin for cash with a range of criminals....Read More
By CCN Markets: One of the reasons governments have been against the adoption of bitcoin is because of its potential to be misused for illegal activities such as money laundering, and the latest report from Los Angeles, California, will give the detractors more fodder. A Los Angeles man has agreed to plead guilty to running...Read More
A Canadian judge has dismissed a motion to set aside an asset freeze in a civil forfeiture case involving the purported FUEL token. A Supreme Court judge in British Columbia (BC), Canada, has denied a motion to set aside an asset freeze, which was requested by the defendants in a multimillion dollar cryptocurrency fraud case....Read More
CoinGecko has joined a blockchain analytics network focusing on anti-money laundering and know your customer issues in an effort to improve its exchange transparency services. Crypto market aggregator CoinGecko has joined the network of blockchain analytics and anti-money laundering (AML) company Coinfirm. This partnership will reportedly allow CoinGecko to improve its exchange Trust Score algorithm,...Read More
