Reported by Mengqi Sun The suit by U.S. regulators against Binance Holdings Ltd. focuses in large part on the work of the cryptocurrency exchange’s former chief compliance officer, alleging he willfully aided and abetted the firm in evading U.S. laws. Samuel Lim, Binance’s compliance chief between 2018 and 2022, faces civil charges of undermining Binance’s […]
Reported by Joseph Menn An exiled Chinese tycoon indicted in New York earlier this month in a billion-dollar fraud case controls the conservative social media platform Gettr and used it to promote cryptocurrencies and propaganda, former employees have told The Washington Post. They said the arrested expatriate, Guo Wengui, and his longtime money manager, William […]
Reported by Marianna Parraga CARACAS, March 25 (Reuters) – An expanding anti-corruption probe in Venezuela has led to the detention of 10 officials and 11 businessmen, the country’s attorney general said on Saturday, adding that arrest warrants for 11 more people have been issued. The investigation, which began in October, is focused on state oil […]
Reported by Michael del Castillo Though less than one percent of cryptocurrency transactions last year were considered illicit, according to blockchain data firm Chainalysis, that was still a record $20 billion, most of which is marked as dirty by a cottage industry of blockchain-data startups managing independent and unofficial blacklists. Crypto sitting on a blacklist […]
Reported by James Reddick European and U.S. authorities have taken down a cryptocurrency mixing platform that facilitated rampant money laundering, and they arrested an alleged operator of the service. On Wednesday, Europol announced that German and U.S. agencies seized four servers belonging to ChipMixer as well as approximately $46.5 million in Bitcoin. The U.S. Department of Justice […]
Reported by Tom Schoenberg US prosecutors were investigating Signature Bank’s work with crypto clients before regulators suddenly seized the lender this past weekend, according to people familiar with the matter. Justice Department investigators in Washington and Manhattan were examining whether the New York bank took sufficient steps to detect potential money laundering by clients — such […]
Reported by JOEL KHALILI When the US government announced sanctions against Tornado Cash last August, the warning seemed to be aimed at all crypto mixers. Alleging that Tornado Cash had been used to launder $7 billion in digital currency—including half a billion dollars tied to Lazarus, a hacking group sponsored by North Korea—the US Treasury’s Office […]
Reported by: Corinne Ramey and Alexander Osipovich FTX co-founder and former director of engineering Nishad Singh pleaded guilty to fraud charges and agreed to cooperate against his former boss, Sam Bankman-Fried, making him the third person in the FTX founder’s orbit to do so. Mr. Singh, 27 years old, pleaded guilty to six criminal counts, including conspiring […]
Reported by: The NY Department of Financial Services New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris today announced the Department has enhanced its ability to detect fraud and other illegal activity among New York State-regulated entities engaged in virtual currency activity through new insider trading and market manipulation risk monitoring tools. […]
Reported by: Arjun Kharpal The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could be gearing up to take action against Paxos, a company that issues a type of cryptocurrency called stablecoin. The move will have major implications for the $137 billion market, experts told CNBC. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency designed to mirror real-world assets such […]
Financial Crime News Briefs 