Cryptocurrency mixing services are a divisive subject in the industry. Some advocate for the privacy-enabling features of these protocols while others maintain that they are mainly used for illicit means. For platforms like Tornado Cash, the mainstream verdict is “guilty as charged.” The infamous decentralized mixing protocol was sanctioned by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in August 2022, essentially making it illegal for anyone to make use of the service. Tornado Cash continues to be a contentious topic and one of its developers, Alexey Pertsev, controversially remains in detention in the Netherlands while investigators look to …

Former FTX chief executive officer Sam Bankman-Fried has reportedly hired Mark Cohen, a former federal prosecutor, to act as his defense attorney. According to a Dec. 6 report from Reuters, Bankman-Fried's spokesperson Mark Botnick said the former FTX CEO has retained Cohen amid a flurry of civil litigation from investors in the crypto exchange and investigations by lawmakers and regulators in the United States. Cohen, a co-founder of law firm Cohen & Gresser, was a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York who also on the defense team for the high-profile case involving Ghislaine Maxwell — …

News involving crypto and fraud is ubiquitous in the white-collar crime sphere and, perhaps more worryingly, these fraudulent activities in the crypto sector are not limited to a single type of crime. Diverse and distinct yet with one common thread, these crimes involve real money and crypto investors are the victims. Many people have placed their life savings into crypto and, on a larger scale, private equities, pension schemes and even nation-states are principal investors and losers. There are con artists who will try and entice their targets to invest in a get-rich scheme that turns out to be a …

A judge with the Seoul Southern District Court has reportedly set aside arrest warrants for Terra co-founder Shin Hyun-seong along with those of 3 Terra investors and 4 developers. According to an Dec. 3 report from South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, Judge Hong Jin-Pyo said there was little risk of Shin or the Terra associates destroying evidence related to the case against the crypto firm, and dismissed warrants that the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office issued on Nov. 29. The report added that Terra co-founder Do Kwon, also facing legal action in South Korea for his role in the firm’s …

One of the leading figures convicted of being behind the $100 million crypto “Ponzi” scheme, EmpiresX, has just been handed an over four-year jail sentence by a United States court. The sentencing was handed to Joshua David Nicholas, the “head trader” of purported crypto platform EmpiresX, who is nowset to serve a 51-month prison sentence along with three years of supervised release for his role in the fraudulent scheme. It follows a Sept. 8 guilty plea from Nicholas for conspiracy to commit securities fraud. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), over a two-year period, Nicholas made claims the platform …

Two Democratic members of the United States Senate have called on the Justice Department to investigate the collapse of FTX and potentially prosecute individuals involved in wrongdoing. In a Nov. 23 letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse requested the Justice Department launch an investigation into crypto exchange FTX’s downfall with the “utmost scrutiny.” The lawmakers cited the impact the collapse of a major firm in the crypto space had had on related companies — lending companies including Genesis and BlockFi halting trading — and funds which FTX …

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried received a $1 billion personal loan from one of four silo companies deeply involved in the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. A formal declaration in ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings from FTX’s new CEO John Ray III has revealed further misappropriation of funds by Bankman Fried. According to the filing, Alameda Research had loaned $1 billion directly to Bankman-Fried, while FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh had also received a $543 million loan from the company. Ray III, the man responsible for picking up the pieces after the infamous collapse of Enron, was scathing …

Historical crime has left a proverbial black mark on the cryptocurrency ecosystem with multi-million dollar hacks, scams and fraud cases grabbing headlines around the world. Various research reports have highlighted the use of cryptocurrencies for illicit means, with varying degrees of severity since Bitcoin’s inception in 2009. This has ebbed and flowed but crypto is still perceived by some as a means to launder money, finance terrorism and facilitate other serious crimes. The prevalence of cryptocurrency-related crime inevitably led to the development of better tools and services to track and trace funds on different blockchains and cryptocurrency exchanges. Firms like …

An investigation of possible criminal misconduct over the insolvency of cryptocurrency exchange FTX is underway by financial investigators and the Bahamas securities regulators, according to a statement by the Royal Bahamas Police Force sent to Reuters on Nov 13. The Royal Bahamas Police stated: "In light of the collapse of FTX globally and the provisional liquidation of FTX Digital Markets Ltd., a team of financial investigators from the Financial Crimes Investigation Branch are working closely with the Bahamas Securities Commission to investigate if any criminal misconduct occurred." The investigation comes after the regulator publicly denied FTX allegations over the weekend. …

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has announced that an individual has pled guilty to wire fraud charges connected to “unlawfully obtained” Bitcoin from the Silk Road marketplace in 2012. In a Nov. 7 announcement, the U.S. Justice Department said James Zhong pled guilty to wire fraud charges related to executing a scheme to steal roughly 50,676 Bitcoin (BTC) from Silk Road. Authorities seized the Bitcoin from Zhong’s home in the state of Georgia in November 2021, at which time the total value of the crypto was roughly $3.36 billion. “James Zhong committed wire …

In the aftermath of the $28 million Deribit hack, the unknown exploiter is moving stolen funds using the decentralized cryptocurrency mixer, Tornado Cash. The Deribit hot wallet hacker has transferred a total of 1,610 Ether (ETH), or around $2.5 million, to Tornado Cash, according to data from the Ethereum block explorer Etherscan. The funds were transferred in 17 transactions, with the first outgoing transaction occurring on Nov. 5 —just a few days after Deribit suffered the hack. The amount of funds moved to Tornado Cash is just a fraction of all stolen ETH on the hacker’s address, as its balance …

United States Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler cited major enforcement actions against crypto firms as part of the “economic realities” of securities regulation. In written remarks for the Practising Law Institute’s Annual Institute on Securities Regulation on Nov. 2, Gensler used examples of SEC enforcement against crypto lending firm BlockFi and a former Coinbase employee in justifying the agency’s actions on violations of U.S. securities laws. Under Gensler, the SEC would take a “treat like cases alike” approach to enforcement actions regardless of the form of securities, funds, or investors. “When BlockFi failed to register the offers and …