FBI and Europol disabled infrastructure of the ChipMixer platform. Bitcoins worth €44 million, servers and 7TB of data were confiscated

The FBI, Europol and law enforcement agencies of several European countries stopped the operation of the cryptocurrency mixing service ChipMixer. They also confiscated €44 million worth of Bitcoins, the EU police service said. German and U.S. authorities, supported by intelligence agencies in Belgium, Poland and Switzerland, have disabled platform infrastructure.

Four servers, 7TB of data and 1.9 thousand BTC (€44.2 million) were confiscated during the operation. The platform’s website is also no longer operational, and when you go to it, it is reported that the domain was seized by the FBI by order of a U.S. court.

Cryptomixers are blockchain services that increase the confidentiality of transactions by hiding the connection between the source and the recipient of the tokens.

According to Europol, ChipMixer, a service created in mid-2017 to anonymize BTC flows, offered complete anonymity to its customers. Law enforcement authorities speculate that the cryptomixer was involved in money laundering and allowed users to hide traces of crimes. Such as drug or weapons trafficking, ransomware attacks and fraud. The platform is believed to have laundered 152,000 BTC (about €2.73 billion).

Cryptomixing services are under close scrutiny by intelligence agencies. This is because they are often used by fraudsters, and many hackers send stolen digital assets to them after hacks to cover their tracks.

Our experts note that in August 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash, the most famous cryptomixer. Which works on the Ethereum blockchain. For conducting money laundering operations through it by hackers from North Korea.

Also in August, alleged Tornado Cash developer Alexei Pertsev was arrested. He is still in custody awaiting trial. Cryptomixer itself was not shut down and continues to operate.