On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it had seized domains associated with three cryptocurrency exchanges facilitating over $800 million in illegal transactions. This action is part of a coordinated effort to combat Russian money laundering operations. The DOJ worked together with the Treasury Department, the Secret Service, and investigations from various countries for the actions to be enacted.
The DOJ released a charge sheet for Sergey Ivanov, also known as Taleon. Ivanov is said to have operated different money laundering services targeted at cybercriminals, including ransomware gangs and narcotics salespeople on the dark web. Jailed alongside him is another Russian national, Timur Shakhmametov, or “JokerStash,” indicted for managing one of the biggest carding sites ever that sold stolen payment card data.
U.S. Treasury Lists Ivanov and Cryptex as Banned Entities
According to the reports, Ivanov ran several crypto exchanges, such as UAPS, PinPays, and PM2BTC, which dealt with 115 million US dollars in digital currencies. By following the blockchain analysis, authorities were able to estimate that 32% of Bitcoin passed through these exchanges, whose originating activities were connected to crimes, with more than $158,000,000 of fraud and over $8,800,000 in ransomware payments.
Furthermore, in relation to this action, Dutch officials arrested the people behind PM2BTC and another site called Cryptex, which was used to exchange more than $7 million of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Cryptex, the company specialising in using the digital platform to purchase cryptocurrency, allegedly made $1.4 billion in money laundering transactions, with 31% connected with unlawful acts.
The U.S. Secret Service got a court order to freeze the domains of UAPS, PM2BTC, and Cryptex. Currently, anyone who visits these sites is confronted with government notifications of the seizures. Further, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco observed, “Today’s actions demonstrate that the Department continues to interrupt the malicious cyber actors and criminal environment.
He was accused of bank fraud and money laundering charges, or Ivanov. New York-based Ivanov and Cryptex are also on the Treasury’s list of banned entities, and the State Department has set rewards of up to $11 million to arrest those implicated.
