This morning, millionaire broker and noted Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff awoke to find his bank under renewed scrutiny due to an international criminal investigation. According to reporting from Australian newspaper The Age and The New York Times, the J5 -- a joint task force of tax authorities from major Western governments convened in the wake of the bombshell publication of the Panama Papers -- have placed “hundreds” of accounts at Schiff’s Puerto Rico-based Euro Pacific Bank under investigation for tax evasion and other financial crimes. The reports detail what appears to be a comically inept organization responsible for harboring the …

Belgium’s financial watchdog has reported scammers stole up to $12 million from investor in the country using fraudulent ads. In an Oct. 5 warning from the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA), the watchdog estimated that investors in Belgium had lost at least 10 million euros — roughly $11.8 million at the time of writing — between May 2019 and September 2020 to fraudulent platforms, including those dealing with cryptocurrencies. The FSMA reported that such platforms scammed victims using fake advertisements on social media featuring pictures of celebrities, directing them to provide information to bad actors. “These platforms often use …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor's note Historians typically date the birth of international policing as we know it today to the 1800s, a response to the explosion in nationalist movements and non-governmental political radicalism in Europe. Just as new linking technologies like the telegraph and the steam engine aided and abetted new networks of political deplorables and any number of Sherlock Holmes plots, the explosion of communications tech of the last quarter-century has brought about new forms of crime. Which is, y’know, something everyone passively …

On Friday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission made a fraudster pay back $7.4 million to investors while vowing to protect the Bitcoin market. Per the CFTC's announcement, James McDonald, Director of the commission's enforcement division, said The CFTC will continue working to protect our markets, including the burgeoning markets for digital assets such as Bitcoin, from fraudulent schemes, and will work in parallel with our criminal law enforcement colleagues where appropriate. Today's announcement concerns Jon Barry Thomson, who pleaded guilty to commodities fraud for convincing two investors to send him over $7 million for a Bitcoin investment scheme that never …

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that the principal of crypto asset escrow company Volantis Market Making has pled guilty to commodities fraud worth more than $3.25 million on October 1. Volantis executive, 49-year-old Jon Barry Thompson, made false representations to a company from which he solicited $3.25 million to make purportedly “no risk” Bitcoin (BTC) purchases through a third firm during June and July of 2018. Despite Thompson asserting he would not part with the money until after the third firm had delivered the BTC, Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney, Audrey Strauss, found that: “Thompson sent the money to …

District police have arrested a 36-year-old man from the Malappuram district of the south Indian state of Kerala on charges of operating a cryptocurrency scam. Nishad has been charged under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act by the district police chief U Abdul Karim. A team led by police inspector P Vishnu seized several documents from Nishad’s house and alleged that he has duped thousands of people from across India of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nishad, who is also the managing director of a Bengaluru-based startup Long Rich Technologies, allegedly lured investors into investing in the …

Rossen Iossifov, a 53-year-old Bulgarian national and owner of the ‘RG Coins’ cryptocurrency exchange, has been convicted of operating a multi-million dollar money laundering ring as part of a transnational auction fraud scheme. Following a two-week trial Iossifov was found guilty by a federal jury in Frankfort, Kentucky, of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit racketeering. The Kentucky resident will face sentencing on Jan. 12, 2021. The jury found that at least 900 U.S. citizens were conned in a scheme that saw Iossifov’s Romania-based accomplices post advertisements on popular auction platforms like eBay and Craigslist for high-value …

The drama over alleged fraud involving Bithumb’s senior executives continues as the company’s chairman has reportedly been summoned for interrogation. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency is purportedly seeking to question Lee Jung-hoon, chairman of board at Bithumb Korea and Bithumb Holdings, according to a Sept. 18 report by South Korea’s state-run news agency Yonhap. As reported, Lee is allegedly accused of multiple fraud and embezzlement offenses regarding the failed listing of the BXA token. The purported fraud caused investor damages of up to 30 billion won ($25 million), the report notes. The police are also reportedly looking to question Lee …

The United States has taken actions against international hackers responsible for the theft of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. On September 16, the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it has imposed sanctions on two Russian nationals who used a sophistication phishing campaign to steal at least $16.8 million from the customers of three virtual currency exchanges in 2017 and 2018 — including two based in the United States. The pair, Danil Potekhin and Dmitrii Karasavidi, created multiple websites impersonating legitimate crypto exchanges …

The team behind Arbistar, a crypto trading bot developer, announced that it would be shutting down a popular trading tool known as Community Bot. According to a press release published by Arbicorp, the company that runs Arbistar, the platform is not currently allowing deposits. All funds have been frozen, preventing users from withdrawing their money. Users are not even able to access crypto from funds that trade with other bots. This has led financial forensic firm, Tulip Research, to warn users that Arbicorp is actually a billion-dollar crypto Ponzi scheme — a claim they say they have made “many times”: …

Emin Gün Sirer, founder and CEO of the blockchain protocol, Avalanche, took to Twitter to explain why he considers that many blockchain projects keep applying dubious strategies in the industry. Sirer considers that some projects are based on “lots of hype, lots of technical-sounding claims,” partnership with companies “too embarrassed to say they were duped,” and also with no actual working novel system. Overall, he says that all is just “smoke and mirrors around old tech” inside most blockchain projects’ operations. Sirer issued such opinions in the wake of a report published by a forensic financial research firm Hindenburg Research, …

Over the years, we have seen a lot of trends such as initial coin offerings, initial exchange offerings, security token offerings, decentralized autonomous organizations and many more, but none of these have become the mainstream. The concept of decentralized finance undoubtedly has its merits, but as the factors that sank the predecessors remain, we have reason to conclude that DeFi is not for long. The window of opportunity has shrunk for several reasons: firstly, because of fraud within the space; secondly, the readiness of regulators to “save” the market from violators by imposing old-fashioned red tape and new restrictions; thirdly, …