For years now, people in the digital currency space have expressed concern about digital currency exchanges and digital currencies being abused for terrorist financing. Another report, this time from researchers at BellingCat, have apparently traced the use of a digital currency exchange directly to a terrorist group. Terrorist financing is not only prohibited and a […]
The Bulgarian police have seized a transport truck from Iran attempting to cross the Bulgarian – Turkey border with 288 kilos of pure heroin, with a street value of $15 million at the low end. The heroin was dry-walled, meaning each brick of heroin was covered individually with drywalling material. According to the US 2019 […]
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 by […]
Updated 2019-04-14 Another Iranian in Canada alleged to owe millions to Iran Marjan Sheikholeslami, an Iranian foreign national, now living in Toronto, Canada, is alleged to have played a major part of a financial crime case with an Iranian petroleum executive, Reza Hamzehlou, and is on trial in absentia in Iran for disrupting Iran’s financial system […]
According to this article in Vancouver, a Vancouver based charity called GiveCrypto.org, is sending, transferring or donating (perhaps all 3), digital currencies from the US (via Coinbase, a digital currency exchange) to people in Venezuela. The article does not say who receives the digital currencies in Venezuela, how they receive it or how much they […]
The Charming Kitten hacking group from Iran (see original report here) has launched a new phishing attack to collect information from public officials connected with the imposition or enforcement of sanctions against Iran. The phishing program relies on untrained security experts at organizations who use 2 factor authentication (2FA) of GMail accounts by SMS, which […]
Who is Meng Wanzhou? Meng Wanzhou is the daughter of the founder of Huawei Technologies Co., one of the largest technology companies in the world based in China. Huawei is one of the largest companies in the world in artificial intelligence (“AI“). Wanzhou leads its AI development and she is the most powerful woman in […]
Concerns mount over Bitcoin and digital currencies being used in Iran for sanctions avoidance.
According to this article in the Financial Times, Iran has sent a supertanker, called Happiness I, en route to Asia, carrying 2 million barrels of oil that is off-the-radar literally, in order to obfuscate that it is transporting Iranian oil to another country. When ships are off-radar, they turn off their transponders and are no […]
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 financed […]