Int'l operation takes down ChipMixer money laundering service

Philly feds help dismantle popular crypto money-laundering site responsible for cleaning $3 billion in illicit funds


by Jeremy Roebuck
Published Mar 15, 2023

U.S. and European authorities — led by a team of federal investigators from Philadelphia — dismantled what they described Wednesday as the world’s most popular cryptocurrency service used by online drug dealers, North Korean hackers, and Russian military intelligence services to launder more than $3 billion in illicit proceeds since 2017.

The site — which operated under the name ChipMixer — drew thousands of users from the darker corners of the internet, the U.S. Justice Department said, including parties responsible for a series of headline-grabbing bitcoin heists and recent ransomware attacks that have plagued health-care services and municipal governments in the United States and abroad.

In addition to seizing two of ChipMixer’s domain names, its backend servers and more than $46 million in cryptocurrency from the service, authorities also filed charges Wednesday against its founder, Minh Quoc Nguyen — a Vietnamese national last known to be living in Hanoi. They accused him of openly flouting financial regulations while obscuring his true name under a series of stolen and fictitious identities.

“ChipMixer facilitated the laundering of cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin, on a vast international scale, abetting nefarious actors and criminals of all kinds in evading detection,” U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said in a statement. “We cannot and will not allow criminals’ exploitation of technology to threaten our national and economic security.”

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https://www.inquirer.com/news/chip-mixer-crypto-bitcoin-seized-ming-quoc-nguyen-charges-20230315.html