U.S. authorities have charged Russians allegedly for their role in a global money laundering and sanctions evasion network using crypto. U.S. authorities also seized websites associated with three cryptocurrency exchanges they consider illegal.
Two Russians Wanted
According to U.S. authorities’ announcement on Thursday, Russian nationals Sergey Ivanov and Timur Shakhmametov have been charged for their involvement in providing money laundering services to cybercriminals using cryptocurrencies.
The U.S. Department of State has announced a reward of $10 million each for information leading to the arrest of Shakhmametov and Ivanov.
U.S. authorities have seized websites associated with three illegal cryptocurrency exchanges as part of what they call “coordinated international efforts” involving authorities from the Netherlands, Latvia, Germany, the UK, Europol, and several U.S. agencies. The websites belong to Russia-linked payment and exchange platforms Cryptex.net, UAPS, PinPays, and PM2BTC.
Over the past 11 years, Ivanov has conducted transactions worth more than $1.15 billion. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud for providing payment processing support to the carding website Rescator, and one count of conspiracy to launder money for the carding website Joker’s Stash.
“Carding” means the illegal use of stolen credit and debit card data for fraudulent purposes.
Shakhmametov, known online as “JokerStash” and “Vega,” was charged with the same crimes as Ivanov but he also faces one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud for his role in running the carding website Jokerstash, which annually offered data from 40 million payment cards for sale.
“Two Russian nationals charged today allegedly pocketed millions of dollars from large-scale money laundering operations and fueled a network of cybercriminals around the world, with Ivanov allegedly assisting darknet drug dealers and ransomware operators,” said U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
During the U.S. Secret Service’s operation, two domain names of websites used to support the money-laundering cryptocurrency exchange “Cryptex.net” were seized, where “37,500 transactions” worth $1.4 billion were made.
