A big shake-up happened in the crypto world. The boss of Samourai Wallet, Keonne Rodriguez, got a five-year prison sentence. Why? He ran a service that mixed up Bitcoin to hide where the money came from. Prosecutors say this service laundered a huge amount of money—over $237 million. Rodriguez and his partner, William Lonergan Hill, were arrested last year. They wer...
A man from Santa Monica recently faced serious consequences for running an illegal sports betting operation. Christopher King was ordered to spend nearly two years behind bars. He also had to give up $10 million and pay back $3. 8 million in taxes he avoided paying. King admitted to several crimes. These included cheating on his taxes, running an illegal gambling bu...
Changpeng Zhao, the mastermind behind Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, just got a big break. The former president, Donald Trump, decided to pardon him. Zhao had been serving time for not doing enough to stop criminals from using his platform for illegal activities like child sex abuse, drug trafficking, and terrorism. Zhao, known as CZ in the cr...
In a surprising turn of events, a U. S. jury couldn't agree on whether Roman Storm, the creator of Tornado Cash, broke the law by helping criminals hide money. Tornado Cash is a tool that makes cryptocurrency transactions hard to trace. The jury did, however, find Storm guilty of running an unlicensed money business. Storm could spend up to five years behind bars fo...
Bitcoin's decentralized nature makes it a hotspot for money laundering. Criminals exploit its complexity to hide illegal transactions, making them look like legal ones. This is a big challenge for those trying to detect and prevent money laundering. Current methods use Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) to analyze transaction data. However, these methods have some ...
The Senate has made a significant step forward in the world of digital money. They passed a law to regulate stablecoins, which are a type of cryptocurrency designed to keep a steady value. This is a big deal because it's the first time the U. S. government is setting rules for these digital tokens. Stablecoins are often linked to the U. S. dollar and are used by cryp...
Bitcoin has become a popular choice for criminals. It's a digital currency that's not controlled by any government. This makes it hard to track illegal activities. To fight this, researchers have been looking into new ways to spot suspicious transactions. One big problem is money laundering. This is when illegal money is made to look legal. It's been around for a lo...
Garantex, a Russian crypto exchange, has had a rough week. On Thursday, Tether locked away about $28 million of Garantex's funds. At the same time, an international law enforcement operation, led by the U. S. Secret Service, took down Garantex's websites. Garantex didn't mention this operation to its customers. Instead, they said they were "suspending all services, i...
Let's dive into the wild world of crypto and meme coins. A recent investigation has uncovered some suspicious activity involving the meme coins called Melania and Libra. Crypto experts have been raising eyebrows over some unusual transactions. The red flags started flying when a whopping 19, 846 SOL tokens (worth $2. 76 million) were used to buy a meme coin called P...
A Florida man, Erick Jason Victoria-Brito, now 30, was recently brought from the Dominican Republic to New York City to face severe charges. He was part of a group that tricked big organizations and government bodies. The group created fake companies and bank accounts to steal money. This crime group targeted various businesses. The scam impacted not only businesses ...