In crypto exchange crackdown from qocsuing's blog

In crypto exchange crackdown

Below: Critics take issue with a database of information on money transfers, and Royal Mail resumes some international operations as it responds to a cyberattack. To get more news about best crypto exchange, you can visit wikifx.com official website.

The Biden administration debuted a new power yesterday for fighting Russian cybercrime and rolled out the first major public move of a new government team devoted to battling illicit use of cryptocurrency.

Both steps came as part of an international effort to punish Bitzlato, a cryptocurrency exchange that U.S. authorities say helped criminals profit from ransomware attacks and drug trafficking.
“It is really evident that they are rolling out both — not only new soldiers but also new weapons — against crypto fraud or crime,” John Melican, chief legal officer of the blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, told me.

Hong Kong-registered Bitzlato has received $2.5 billion in cryptocurrency since 2019, according to blockchain data firm Chainalysis. More than a quarter of it came from illicit sources, the company said.

“The biggest sources of illicit cryptocurrency sent to Bitzlato were addresses associated with crypto scams, dark net markets, and sanctioned entities such as the high-risk exchange Garantex, which was designated last year,” the company said in a blog post.
The Justice Department announced that it had arrested Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov on Tuesday night in Miami, charging him with running a business that transmitted illicit funds without meeting U.S. regulatory safeguards, including anti-money laundering requirements. Legkodymov, who the Justice Department said lives in China, faces a maximum of five years if convicted, but prosecutors warned that they could still accuse him of committing more crimes.

“Today’s actions send the clear message: whether you break our laws from China or Europe — or abuse our financial system from a tropical island — you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a news release announcing the arrest.

When the Justice Department set up the team, “We said that NCET would investigate those who enable the use of digital assets to facilitate crime, with a particular focus on virtual currency exchanges and services,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. said in prepared remarks at a Wednesday news conference.

It was also the first time the Treasury Department used more muscular authorities Congress gave it in 2020 to take on Russian money laundering.

The new power is focused on money laundering, and Keating said he had cryptocurrency fraud and ransomware in mind when he drafted the provision to update it in the fiscal 2022 defense authorization law.

You can read more about the government action against Bitzlato in this story by my colleagues Perry Stein, Devlin Barrett and Douglas MacMillan.

“While Bitzlato isn’t a household name for most people, the cryptocurrency exchange has been on our radar for years,” Andrew Fierman, Chainalysis’s head of sanctions strategy, told me via email. “If cybercriminals cannot reliably convert the cryptocurrency generated by their activities into cash, the incentives to commit those crimes plummet. Today's action reiterates the [U.S.] government’s commitment to shutting down these services that enable criminals, similar to previous sanctions on Suex and Chatex.”