Two crypto dudes who allegedly blew through US$4.5 million on a $22k salary, used customer funds to live in a mansion together, take a private jet, gamble at casinos and drive around in exotic fast cars, charged with money laundering

Tweet Two Bitcoin guys, one who called himself the “Krypto King”, were charged in Arizona with money laundering and wire fraud after an investigation by the US Secret Service. According to material filed in the case, they are alleged to have used US$4.5 million of money that belonged to customers to live a lavish lifestyle […]

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 […]

“Take the money and run, and blame someone else” – a digital currency exchange founder’s exit strategy

Tweet The brother A criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York and deposed by a special agent of the FBI against Konstantin Ignatov, an executive who helped operate a digital currency company called OneCoin and a digital currency exchange, sheds some light on the murky world of OneCoin. The money From 2014 […]

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 […]

American ICO lawyer and chairman of Vancouver Blockchain pubco, arrested for extortion

Tweet The FBI arrested Steven Nerayoff, a US lawyer known for his work on advising ICOs (allegedly including the first ICO issued by Toronto’s Ethereum and Ethereum’s second ICO, The DAO), and charged him with extortion. According to the complaint, Nerayoff was retained by the Seattle company to assist it to launch an ICO for […]

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 […]

FATF to finalize interpretation of virtual assets, digital currency exchanges and ICOs to require they be FIU-registered and supervised for AML compliance

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 […]

Canadian Member of Parliament Introduces Bill to Allow for Crypto Capital Gains Donations to Charities

Tweet Canadian Parliamentarian Dan Albas, has introduced Bill C-452 in Parliament today which would allow holders of cryptocurrency to make charitable donations in crypto to Canadian charities and get a tax credit for their donations. The short but powerful amendment to the Income Tax Act, amends §38(a.1) to include crypto as an approved category for the […]