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.

Scotland Yard cybercrime unit has tracked down phone scam suspects after examining cryptocurrency payments. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts

Analysis of Bitcoin transactions helped British police arrest more than 100 people, according to Metropolitan Police. In the largest scam operation in the country’s history. Which was conducted by Scotland Yard, was dismantled site iSpoof and caught the suspects of telephone scams.

iSpoof allowed scammers to impersonate tax officials and banks. This included Barclays, Santander, HSBC, Lloyds and others. Phone scammers tried to trick people into giving up money or providing confidential information. For example, disposable bank account access codes. iSpoof disguised phone numbers to make it appear that scammers were calling from a trusted source. With iSpoof, scammers paid in Bitcoin.

The average loss, among those who complained of fraud, was £10,000. It is believed that in total victims of scammers lost tens of millions of pounds. Whereas iSpoof scammers made almost £3.2 million in 20 months. According to police, more than 200 thousand potential victims in Britain alone were attacked through the site. In one year, iSpoof made about 10 million scam calls around the world.

Operation to identify this criminal group was carried out by the cybercrime unit of London Police with the assistance of Europol, FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Investigators began their investigation in June 2021. They collected information from the iSpoof website, and initially the circle of suspects was 59,000 people. So they began tracking only those UK residents on Bitcoin transactions. Who spent at least £100 in Bitcoin on this site.

A wave of arrests followed in the country, and information about other suspects was passed on to law enforcement colleagues in Netherlands, Australia, France and Ireland.