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 […]

21-year-old SIM swapper who allegedly stole $81 million in crypto, ordered to pay it back

Tweet Bitcoin investor, Michael Terpin, won a US$75.8 million civil judgment on Friday in California against 21-year-old Nicholas Truglia who SIM-swapped Terpin’s cellular phone and stole over US$23 million from Terpin’s digital currency wallets that held coins from three ICOs. In all, Truglia is alleged to have stolen over US$81 million in crypto currencies via […]

Australian police uncover Bitcoin-related alleged international drug traffickers

Tweet Two Bitcoin-related alleged drug traffickers living large  In the last few months, the Australian Federal Police have arrested two well-known Bitcoin guys suspected of leading secret lives as international drug traffickers. Both alleged to the public that they had real jobs, one operating a digital currency exchange and the other an IT business, but […]

Iran confirms supporting an ICO and several Blockchain projects

Tweet On Tuesday, Iranian officials spoke to the Iranian media and confirmed that a government organization – Iran Telecommunication Research Center – has four Blockchain projects in progress that have looked at using Blockchain for policy making, threat management and business use cases for Iran. Further, they announced that a project at Sharif University, funded […]

US identifies Canada as major money laundering country, and notes concern over its low prosecution rate

Tweet Canada once again a Major Money Laundering country The 2019 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) published on Friday by the U.S. Department of State identifies Canada once again as a major money laundering country along with a host of risky countries for financial crime. A major money laundering country is one whose banks […]

Vancouver ICO firm co-founders allegedly defrauded investors

Tweet RCMP Investigation According to court filings in Canada, Kevin Hobbs and Lisa Chang, the two co-founders of an ICO called EtherParty FUEL and an associated company, Vanbex, based in Vancouver, are allegedly under investigation by the Federal and Serious Organized Crime Division of the RCMP for, inter alia, fraud and are also allegedly under […]

World’s first bi-national government issued digital currency launched in Middle East

Tweet Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced yesterday in Abu Dhabi that they have created and launched a joint new bi-national digital currency. The name of the coin has not been released, not the type, not the amount issued, nor its price per coin. According to the governments of both nations, the new […]

ICOs & tokens increasingly attracting FBI criminal attention

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 […]

International money laundering case allegedly involving the ICO Dragon Coin

Tweet According to the federal Thai police, as reported here in the Bangkok Post, the Dragon Coin (which is an ICO), was used for or was involved in it seems unwittingly, an international fraud and money laundering scheme. The Dragon Coin is an ICO allegedly launched with the involvement of a former Triad boss and […]