The Spanish Guardia Civil has arrested eight people and seized over €9 million, luxury cars, cannabis plants and jewellery in connection with an alleged money laundering operation in Spain that involved the use of Bitcoin ATMs and digital currency exchanges to launder proceeds of crime and avoid the filing of suspicious transaction reports.
According to Europol, the alleged money launderers were members of organized crime who used private corporations to open bank accounts and transfer funds from digital currency exchanges in other countries which were proceeds of drug trafficking.
The police say that organized crime used digital currency exchanges overseas (which from Spain usually means North or South America), where there is a strong tie to organized crime and drug trafficking and where it is easy to cash out from Bitcoin through a digital currency exchange to a bank account (which on speculation, may mean the US or Canada but considering there is no US involvement in this arrest, it may mean Canada).