American ICO lawyer and director of Vancouver Blockchain company, hit with more extortion charges

Tweet Grand jury indictment for Canadian director Steven Nerayoff, a US lawyer who advised a number of digital currency companies and initial coin offerings (“ICOs“) was indicted by a Grand Jury on January 10, 2020, in New York. Nerayoff is, or was, the Chairman of a British Columbia public company called Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. […]

Canadian CEO of Silk Road drug market who bragged that US law enforcement “don’t have sh*t on me”, nabbed and pleads guilty in the US

Tweet One of the kingpins of Silk Road, the online darknet drug market that operated with Bitcoin, and its alleged CEO, Roger Clark, a Canadian, pled guilty on Thursday in New York to conspiracy to distribute narcotics. He faces a term of incarceration of 20 years. Clark was extradited from Thailand in 2018, and was […]

Over $3.2 billion missing in digital currency fraud in China; several Bitcoin exchanges shut down and many CEOs disappear with funds

Tweet A few weeks ago in China, several digital currency exchanges announced that they were suspending trading or shutting down operations altogether, leaving the recovery of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of funds with those exchanges up in the air, and this after approximately US$3 billion went missing from two initial coin offerings (“ICOs“) […]

Canadian digital currency exchange helps you buy a sanctions-avoidance virtual currency created by a Russian on a sanctions list, with ties to a $100M Ponzi scheme

Tweet Russian on OFAC list launches a coin The Kharon Brief has an interesting article here about Aleksei Muratov, also spelled Aleksey Muratov, a Ukrainian on the OFAC sanctions list here, who founded, launched and owns an initial coin offering called PRIZM. Donetsk People’s Republic Muratov lives in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. According to […]

The Com Man: Canadian ICO founder who led a rich and famous lifestyle with private jet trips, diamond watches and fast cars, arrested

Tweet Canadian ICO founder arrested; investors all over the world may be out at least $80 million A Canadian from Montreal, Quebec, named Aziz Com Mirza, was arrested in Dubai on October 27, 2019, and is chilling in the Al Awir jail, on allegations of running a Ponzi scheme. Mirza founded a Canadian initial coin […]

SEC obtains emergency order against Telegram’s ICO, which raised $1.7 billion from investors

Tweet Ex parte injunction The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC“) announced today that it filed an emergency application ex parte in US Federal District Court in Manhattan, and after a hearing, obtained a temporary order over the initial coin offering (“ICO“) launched by Telegram Group, Inc. (“Telegram“), the messaging application, which raised $1.7 billion from investors […]

Blockchain companies in Vancouver, Canada caught up in securities fraud investigation

Tweet Bridgemark and Blockchain Two Canadian Blockchain companies based in Vancouver, BLOK Technologies Inc. (“Blok“) and Cryptobloc Technologies Corp. (“Cryptobloc“) have been caught up as part of the so-called Bridgemark scandal affecting Vancouver’s capital markets. The Bridgemark situation started in November 2018, when the Executive Director of the BC Securities Commission announced that he had […]

US Treasury files civil claim against foreign Bitcoin exchange and its owner / officer to enforce penalties of $100M for AML failures

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 […]

Several agencies take down Bitcoin mixing & anonymizing service

Tweet Working with Europol, several law enforcement agencies shut down a Bitcoin mixing and anonymizing service called Bestmixer, which was one of the largest mixing services for digital currencies. Mixing and anonymizing services or anonymizing exchanges process digital currencies on behalf of customers in order to make it difficult to trace the digital currencies. The […]