Tweet The Department of Justice announced the indictment of 7 Russian foreign nationals in Pennsylvania for their roles in an alleged hacking of anti-doping sports agencies, including one in Canada called the Canadian Centre for Ethics and Sports. According to the indictment, the indicted persons hacked into computers for several years to allegedly influence sports […]
Tweet An alleged financier for Hezbollah, Assad Ahmad Barakat, was arrested in Brazil, accused of laundering $10 million at a casino in Argentina. In 2004, the US Treasury said Barakat was one of the most influential members of  Hezbollah, a listed terrorist organization. It accused him of using his businesses in the border areas of Brazil, Paraguay […]
Tweet Do foreign digital currency exchanges that take US customers online have to be AML registered in the US? Not unsurprisingly, the answer is yes. Under US law, digital currency ​exchangers​ qualify as money transmitters and are subject to the obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act. Key concepts to know are that: An exchanger is a person […]
Tweet 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 […]
Tweet The US Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Secret Service, and the DEA announced the arrest and pending prosecution of more than 35 darknet vendors across the country after a year-long investigation dubbed Operation Dark Gold. US federal law enforcement seized more than $20 million in Bitcoin and other digital currencies, 100 illegal […]
Tweet I wrote this post, below, 5 years ago, and sadly nothing has changed to reduce the incidents of human trafficking of young girls around the world, or to make their world a better and safer place. In fact, it has gotten worse. Now its a US$32 billion annual business – up from US$9 billion […]
Tweet Over 35 people were arrested in a US-wide sweep by the US DOJ, DEA, US Secret Service, ICE, HSI and the FBI agents for selling illegal drugs over the darknet and laundering the proceeds of crime using, inter alia, Bitcoin. The operation involved agents posing as digital currency exchanges to obtain personal information of […]
Tweet Canada once again a “Major Money Laundering†country The 2018 “International Narcotics Control Strategy Report†(INCSR) published in March 2018 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, and is generally doing a lot worse combatting money […]
Tweet An Iranian foreign national named Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, was arrested following an indictment in New York for allegedly running a scheme to defraud banks, avoid US sanctions and launder proceeds of crime. Nejad was the Chairman of a bank in Malta called Pilatus Bank. The US DoJ alleged that the Pilatus Bank was […]
Tweet The National Crime Agency in the UK has been granted the first set of Unexplained Wealth Orders (“UWO”)Â under the Criminal Finances Act, by the UK High Court requiring that an unnamed foreign national from Asia provide a written statement explaining how they obtained sufficient wealth to purchase property. The foreign national subject to the […]