The US Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC“) filed a complaint in Texas on March 16, 2020, against Robert Dunlap, Nicole Bowdler, the girlfriend of Dunlap, and a former Washington State Senator, David Schmidt, in connection with a digital currency they launched called Meta 1 coin (the “MetaCoin“) which raised US$4 million from the public. […]
Indictment for mixing service On February 13, 2020, the US government unsealed an indictment against Larry Dean Harmon, the alleged founder of a Bitcoin mixing Bitcoin service, and of a darknet search engine that hooked up with the now-defunct illegal Canadian darknet site called AlphaBay. The mixing service was called Helix and the darknet search […]
Grand jury indictment for Canadian director Steven Nerayoff, a US lawyer who advised a number of digital currency companies and initial coin offerings (“ICOs“) was indicted by a Grand Jury on January 10, 2020, in New York. Nerayoff is, or was, the Chairman of a British Columbia public company called Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. According […]
A UK man, Paul Johnson, was sentenced to eight years in jail in the UK for operating a darknet drug trafficking business from the attic of his home. In order to obfuscate what he was doing, he set up a company called “Labrador Tea Company” and used it to buy illegal drugs from Canadians in […]
Inner City Press, a blog that covers trials in the Southern District of New York, and which covered one of the trials associated with the initial coin offering (“ICO“) of OneCoin, released an email by the founder of OneCoin, Ruja Ignatova, where she said she had £220,000 in cash and wanted it stashed in London. […]
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 that […]
One of the kingpins of Silk Road, the online darknet drug market that operated with Bitcoin, and its alleged CEO, Roger Clark, a Canadian, pled guilty on Thursday in New York to conspiracy to distribute narcotics. He faces a term of incarceration of 20 years. Clark was extradited from Thailand in 2018, and was charged […]
The CSA guidance The Canadian securities commissions, through the Canadian Securities Administrators (the “CSA“), issued guidance on digital currencies and digital currency exchanges in Canada, the impact of which fundamentally changes the legal landscape for digital currency exchanges and puts the vast majority of them under the supervision of provincial securities commissions. The securities commissions […]
$50 Million SIM-swapped A man from Montreal, Samy Bensaci, who allegedly stole US$50 million in Bitcoin from US residents, was arrested in Victoria, British Columbia, and removed to Ontario for prosecution, where he has since been released on bail, reported La Presse today. The theft of $50 million happened during 2018 and 2019, according to […]
Russian on OFAC list launches a coin The Kharon Brief has an interesting article here about Aleksei Muratov (Алексей Муратов), also spelled Aleksey Muratov, a Russian foreign national who is on the US OFAC sanctions list here, who founded, launched and owns an initial coin offering called PRIZM. Donetsk People’s Republic Muratov is the Central […]