The Manhattan district attorney has indicted a group of individuals with allegedly selling drugs and laundering millions of dollars with bitcoin (BTC). The development was announced in a press release published on April 16. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., the United States Secret Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have indicted Chester Anderson and his criminal accomplices Jarrette Codd and Ronald Maccarty. The defendants allegedly operated stores on the dark web that sold and shipped “hundreds of thousands” of tablets of counterfeit drugs. Authorities seized 420,000 to 620,000 alprazolam tablets, 500 …
Konstantin Ignatov, co-founder of alleged crypto scam OneCoin, has pleaded guilty to participation in the multi-billion dollar fraud. According to a BBC report on Nov. 14, Ignatov signed a plea on Oct. 4 and now faces up to 90 years in prison. The news was made public on Nov. 12, the BBC says. After being arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in March 2019, Ignatov pleaded guilty to several charges, including money laundering and fraud. While facing up to 90 years behind bars, he has yet to be sentenced and will reportedly not face further criminal charges for his role …
Earlier this week, the decentralized lending protocol bZx was exploited in back-to-back “flash loan” attacks. While the two exploits were distinct, the end results remained the same. In total, $954,000 was gleaned from the platform. But what exactly happened? Was it an exploit, a simple case of arbitrage or a malicious attack? And where does decentralized finance go from here? It hasn’t been a good PR week for the DeFi sector. For some, the movement promising an alternative to the legacy financial system is starting to look like a failed experiment. For others, the attacks amounted to little more than …
The Texas securities regulator has continued its crackdown on cryptocurrency scams, spotting an alleged fraudulent crypto firm that made fake claims about COVID-19 donations. On April 8, the Texas State Securities Board (TSSB) issued an emergency cease and desist order against Ultra Mining, alleging that the crypto mining firm is involved in diverse illicit activities including purportedly fraudulent claims to double investors’ money. As specified in an official TSSB notice, the Texas action was brought jointly with the Alabama Securities Commission to stop the ongoing illegal offering. According to the order, Ultra Mining is promising some “eye-opening returns.” As such, …
The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) has unsealed a fraud complaint against Swedish citizen Roger Nils-Jonas Karlsson and associated firm Eastern Metal Securities (EMS), according to a press release on June 19. According to the DoJ Karlsson and EMS are charged with committing securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Specifically, Karlsson allegedly instructed investors to pay for his products using virtual currencies, such as the cryptocurrency bitcoin (BTC). According to the complaint, the EMS website was registered to a made-up person, and offered shares of “Pre Funded Reversed Pension Plan” of which investors could allegedly purchase shares at …