According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), a federal grand jury in Georgia has charged three Russian nationals who ran Blender.io and Sinbad.io cryptocurrency mixers with money laundering.
Roman Vitalyovich Ostapenko and Alexander Evgenyevich Oleynik were apprehended last month while jointly operating with aiding in the laundering of crime proceeds. The whereabouts of the third individual, Anton Vyachlavovich Tarasov, are unknown.
Take down of Crypto Mixers: the Authorities Obliterate Their Operations
The Blender and Sinbad mixers are responsible for a portion of the infrastructure architecture being used for crypto mixers, and these have also been taken down with great force by the authorities.
One of these, Blend, has been accused of aiding North Korea cyber criminals in laundering their illegally obtained Western crypto currency and as a result, was sanctioned by the Department of Treasury.
All forms of transaction-based cryptocurrencies are able to be masked by these types of services which were the first to get sanctioned by the Treasury.
According to Brent S. Wible, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, the defendants operated these mixers as safe havens for laundering criminally derived funds,
Including proceeds from ransomware and wire fraud. He added that these mixers facilitated state-sponsored hacking groups and cybercriminals, endangering public safety and national security.
U.S. lawmakers have been divided on the usage of crypto mixers because some use it for privacy while others for criminal means.
In a similar matter, a federal appeals court revoked the Treasury’s penalties on Tornado Cash, asserting that sanctions cannot be imposed on the fundamental technology. Meanwhile, the case against the co-founders of Tornado Cash remains unresolved.
Blender.io functioned from 2018 to 2022, and when it was shut down, it was followed by Sinbad.io, which operated during the 2022 crypto ban. Sinbad.io was later on sanctioned by the Treasury Department for supporting illegal activities. This case exemplifies the recent initiatives taken against crypto services that have been abused for illegitimate reasons.
Crypto Executive Charged for Wire Fraud of $9 Million
Travis Ford, who was a co-founder and head trader of Wolf Capital, has pleaded guilty of a conspiracy of wire fraud which caused other investors a loss of 9.4 million US dollars.
Ford called himself a ‘sophisticated investor’ around wise people who gave him money on the promise of making 1-2 percent a day, amounting to a staggering 547 percent a year.
As they were trying to raise money from investors, Ford directly used Wolf Capital’s website, social media and other online tools to reach potential investors path in the 2023 January to August period. He then used those funds for self-enrichment instead of the legal purposes for which he had raised those funds.
According to Ford guilty plea he stated “misappropriated and diverted investor funds to benefit himself and his co-conspirators, to the financial detriment of investors.” This specific case happens to fall into the net of a large scale movement that is set up to address the problems of crypto scams.
On the 5th of Jan, authorities in Vietnam detained four people allegedly involved in the crypto mining scam that grossed over $157300 from 200 victims.
Just like that, the Springfield Police Department has also complained about the increasing cases of crypto ATMs being a part of a scam. It is also worth noting that the authorities in Massachusetts have also started an investigation into incidents around the use of cryptocurrency machines.”
