Tweet US$60 million penalty On October 19, 2020, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN“) assessed a US$60 million penalty (here) against Larry Dean Harmon, the owner of two Bitcoin mixing and anonymizing services called Helix and Coin Ninja LLC. FinCEN found that the two entities were operating as unregistered money services businesses (“MSB“) which exchanged […]
Tweet FinCEN has released an advisory for banks to become aware of, and assess the purchase and trafficking of fentanyl online for financial crime compliance. Fentanyl is imported in bulk from Mexican cartels and follows the same typology as typical TCOs and money laundering activities. It is also imported from China via online sales on […]
Tweet The US Attorney for the Northern District of California, on behalf of the US Treasury, has filed a civil complaint against the Bitcoin exchange known as BTC-e and one of its alleged owners / officers, Alexander Vinnik, to enforce over $100 million in monetary penalties for a series of anti-money laundering law violations. BTC-e […]
Tweet In furtherance of the US approach to responsible innovation, the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF“)’s private sector consultation in Vienna two weeks ago, will help drive changes to FATF Recommendation 15 to bring digital currencies, ICOs, and digital currency exchanges more fully into the AML requirements in June 2019. The Vienna change will take […]
Tweet The DOJ from the Southern District of New York, unsealed a grand jury superseding indictment against two people today for allegedly providing payment processing services to digital currency exchanges without being licensed and under circumstances where they allegedly lied to obtain bank accounts. They are charged with bank fraud. According to the indictment, Reginald […]
Tweet Arrest of FinCEN employee for SARs disclosure The US government has arrested an employee of FinCEN for providing copies of suspicious activity reports (“SARâ€)  to the media. SARs disclosure is illegal SARs are required to be filed and submitted by certain reporting entities, such as banks, to FinCEN when the bank or its employees, […]
Tweet A Bitcoin seller was arrested in the US on Friday and charged with 31 offences including international money laundering, operating an illegal digital currency exchange, failing to have an anti-money laundering program in place and structuring transactions. 21-year-old Jacob Campos was a developer at Edge Wallet and a Bitcoin trader who sold Bitcoin in […]
Tweet Do foreign digital currency exchanges that take US customers online have to be AML registered in the US? Not unsurprisingly, the answer is yes. Under US law, digital currency ​exchangers​ qualify as money transmitters and are subject to the obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act. Key concepts to know are that: An exchanger is a person […]
Tweet For the first time ever, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FINCEN“), has asserted jurisdiction over a foreign digital currency exchange, BTC-E, for the purposes of fines, and assessed civil penalties for anti-money laundering law failures under the Bank Secrecy Act in the amount of $110,003,314. In July of this year, BTC-E and its […]
Tweet The US Treasury has announced that it is extending its Geographical Targeting Orders to identify purchasers of luxury real estate properties in six areas in the US. The GTOs require title insurance companies to identify the natural persons behind shell companies used to pay all cash for high-end residential real estate. A Special Agent with […]