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 funds [...]
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 laundering [...]
On Friday, a Québec Court ordered the founder of an illegal ICO, Dominic Lacroix, to transfer $3.7 million worth of Bitcoin during a Court hearing and threatened him with incarceration if he did not immediately do so. Lacroix created the Plexcoin ICO which is the subject of an enforcement action by the SEC. According to [...]
This guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain, distributed ledger tech, and digital currencies is taken from a collection of presentations, comments, speeches we’ve made at global conferences and articles written by us from 2012 to 2015. Bitcoin Consumer payments and ways of transferring value in Canada and globally have shifted over the last several decades from paper-based media, [...]
The US continued its take down of Bitcoin companies this week with the unsealing of an indictment against BTC-e and Alex Vinnik, and his arrest in Greece. The Indictment against Vinnik and BTC-e was obtained in January 2017, and was sealed until now so that he could be located internationally and arrangements made to effect [...]
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 founder, [...]
The US DoJ has taken down what it calls the world’s largest criminal marketplace on the Internet called AlphaBay yesterday, which operated for over two years on the dark net. AlphaBay was over ten times larger than Silk Road when Silk Road was taken down in 2013. Like Silk Road, AlphaBay was used for trading of [...]
Two lead US government agents in Silk Road investigation arrested for allegedly stealing over $1 million of Bitcoin from Silk Road during the investigation Two former government agents involved in the Silk Road murder and extortion investigations in Baltimore, Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, were arrested and charged with corruption, money laundering, wire fraud and [...]
Are Bitcoin Exchanges MSBs? The Québec Government’s Authorité des Marchés Financiers (the “AMF“) today issued a News Release announcing that businesses that operate digital currency ATMs and “platforms for trading virtual currencies” must be licensed by the AMF as money services businesses (“MSB“) pursuant to the provincial Money Services Business Act (the “Act“). It also issued a [...]
US cross-border drug strategy to cover new ground in British Columbia Christine Duhaime, B.A., J.D., Financial Crime and Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist Follow @cduhaime Let’s Talk Bitcoin has an interesting article here on the US drug initiative to reduce the cross-border drug trade between Canada and the US with a focus on targeting the use [...]