Tweet A foreign national from France, known on the dark net as OxyMonster, was sentenced to 20 years jail in the US for selling drugs such as fentanyl, online, and laundering the proceeds of crime. Gal Vallerius, 36, pleaded guilty to drug distribution and money laundering in Miami in June for selling cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, oxycodone […]
Tweet According to this interview with FBI’s Financial Crimes Section Chief on CNBC, the FBI is seeing an increase in the number of complaints and cases opened involving digital currencies and crime. In particular, the FBI said that it is mostly ICOs and associated investment fraud schemes involving Bitcoin that are on the raise for […]
Tweet The New York Office of the Attorney General (the “OAG“) released a report yesterday on the integrity of digital currency exchanges. It sought the voluntary participation of exchanges including Bitstamp, Coinbase, Binance, Huobi, Bitfinex, Kraken, Bittrex, Gemini and Poloniex, among others. The OAG noted that Binance and Kraken declined to participate, citing the fact […]
Tweet This week, US and Chinese law enforcement announced the continuation of a joint investigation into fentanyl production and trafficking with a view to tackle the problem through money laundering investigations to identify TCOs involved. As part of the announcement, China said that on September 1, 2018, it banned two fentanyl variants. In February 2017, […]
Tweet Operation Darkness Falls nets Canadian fentanyl dealer The US DoJ, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the US Postal Service and DEA announced several arrests in Operation Darkness Falls, an international operation that sought to ferret out the identities of people selling illegal drugs, especially fentanyl, on the darknet that accepted Bitcoin and other digital […]
Tweet The US has indicted 12 Russian foreign nationals for hacking, conspiracy and money laundering for allegedly interfering with the 2016 US presidential election. According to the indictment, Russia operated an intelligence agency called GRU which obtained confidential documents from the Clinton campaign systems by hacking and systematically released them to sway public opinion. According […]
Tweet Europol announced today that the Spain and Columbia collectively arrested 23 members of an unidentified transnational criminal organization (the “Group”) involved in laundering the proceeds of crime on behalf of other unidentified transitional criminal organizations. The Group didn’t launder a lot of money – only €2 million.  The Group allegedly used Bitcoin to launder […]
Tweet A woman in California, who admitted operating an unlicensed in-person digital currency exchange where she traded cash for Bitcoin,  was sentenced today to 12 months in federal prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of US$20,000. Theresa Tetley pled guilty to conducting an illegal business and engaging in unlawful monetary transactions involving Bitcoin, and […]
Tweet The US Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Secret Service, and the DEA announced the arrest and pending prosecution of more than 35 darknet vendors across the country after a year-long investigation dubbed Operation Dark Gold. US federal law enforcement seized more than $20 million in Bitcoin and other digital currencies, 100 illegal […]
Tweet A Court in China has ruled that Blockchain technology can be used to provide evidence in litigation in a first-of-its-kind decision. The litigation involved the ownership of intellectual property, where a claim of IP was recorded on the Blockchain. The Hangzhou Court of the Internet in China’s Zhejiang Province ruled that information stored on […]