A cryptocurrency mixer that processed over $3 billion in illegal transactions on the darknet has been taken down and its Vietnamese operator charged with money laundering, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and multiple federal and international law enforcement agencies, including the German Federal Criminal Police (GFCP), coordinated a "large-scale international takedown" of darknet cryptocurrency "mixing" service ChipMixer, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced in a March 15 news release.
"ChipMixer was responsible for laundering more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency between 2017 and the present," DHS states in the release, "involving ransomware, darknet marketplaces, fraud, cryptocurrency heists and other hacking schemes."
Minh Quốc Nguyễn, 49, of Hanoi, Vietnam, was charged in Philadelphia on Wednesday with money laundering, operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and identity theft connected to ChipMixer's operation. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison, according to the release.
"Together, with our international partners at HSI The Hague, we are firmly committed to identifying and investigating cybercriminals who pose a serious threat to our economic security by laundering billions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency under the misguided anonymity of the darknet," Scott Brown, HSI Arizona Special Agent in Charge, said in the release
Court documents state ChipMixer, "one of the most widely used mixers to launder criminally-derived funds," according to the release, let clients deposit bitcoin then "co-mingled" the deposits with other users' bitcoin to make it hard for law enforcement to trace transactions, the release reports.
According to the complaint, "ChipMixer attracted a significant criminal clientele and became indispensable in obfuscating and laundering funds from multiple criminal schemes," the release states.
The takedown operation involved the GFCP seizing ChipMixer's back-end servers and over $46 million in bitcoin, as well as the court-authored seizures of two internet domains leading users to ChipMixer and one Github account.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the Department of Justice and its domestic and international partners "disabled a prolific cryptocurrency mixer, which has fueled ransomware attacks, state-sponsored crypto-heists, and darknet purchases across the globe."
"Today's coordinated operation reinforces our consistent message: We will use all of our authorities to protect victims and take the fight to our adversaries," Monaco said in the release. "Cybercrime seeks to exploit boundaries, but the Department of Justice’s network of alliances transcends borders and enables disruption of the criminal activity that jeopardizes our global cybersecurity."
