The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Ukrainian regulation enforcement not too long ago collaborated on a profitable operation to take down rogue digital foreign money exchanges. The operation concerned the seizure of domains of 9 digital foreign money trade providers.
The company seized about 9 exchanges
A number of the exchanges seized included 24xbtc.com, 100btc.professional, pridechange.com, and bitcoin24.trade. These web sites offered nameless digital foreign money trade providers that circumvented the foundations and rules required of licensed crypto exchanges.
The FBI found that these exchanges had inadequate anti-money laundering measures and barely collected any know-your-customer (KYC) data or none in any respect.
These unlicensed exchanges function hubs within the cybercrime ecosystem, based on the Bureau. Many of those digital foreign money exchanges have been marketed on on-line boards dedicated to discussing prison actions.
The FBI has been more and more concerned in cryptocurrency-related points, reflecting the importance of digital currencies within the world economic system and the ensuing improve in cryptocurrency-related crimes.
FBI tightens leash on crypto criminals
The Bureau has been investigating and prosecuting people concerned in varied types of cryptocurrency-related crime, together with theft, fraud, cash laundering, and ransomware assaults.
In April, the FBI performed a search of the house of Ryan Salame, a former govt at FTX, in relation to his earlier position as one among Sam Bankman-Fried’s high advisors. The Bureau’s inquiry into Salame is concentrated on whether or not he performed a task in insider buying and selling or market manipulation.
Earlier this yr, the FBI seized 86.5 ETH and two non-fungible tokens (NFTs) value over $100,000 from a phishing scammer. The seizure adopted a prolonged investigation by unbiased blockchain investigator ZachXBT, who first uncovered the fraudulent exercise on Twitter in September 2022.
As digital currencies proceed to realize widespread acceptance, it’s possible that the FBI and different regulation enforcement businesses will proceed to concentrate on combating cryptocurrency-related crimes.