Bestmixer Seized by Police for Washing $200 Million in Tainted Cryptocurrency Clean:
Bestmixer.io has been seized and shut down by European police for reportedly laundering over $200 million in cryptocurrency.
On Wednesday, Europol, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD), and Luxembourg authorities said six servers used to facilitate the service were seized in the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Bestmixer launched in May 2018. Only a month later, police began investigating the mixing service and found that over the course of one year, the "world's leading cryptocurrency mixing service" had managed to launder at least $200 million in cryptocurrency on behalf of customers.
[...] The service was able to mix Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC). By "mixing" these tainted coins with others, it is possible to clean up funds and eradicate ties to criminal activities written in the blockchain ledger in a process also known as "washing."
[...] A commission is then taken from the original sum before the funds are diverted to another output address, free of ledger entries which may criminalize the owners.
McAfee assisted in the investigation and has published a blog post about it.
Also at: Security Week
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 27 2019, @05:16AM (2 children)
Read those "use by" labels, people!
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/05/25/0823253 [soylentnews.org]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @02:22PM (1 child)
Runaway1956, use by 1955.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @03:22PM
You're jealous, 'cause you can't get used?
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday May 27 2019, @05:35AM (9 children)
We all know that there are legitimate uses for torrent files, which is the argument put forward by torrent sites when trying to stay open.
In the case of Bestmixer, they seem to have actively advertised the fact that the site can be used to wash dirty Bitcoins. But is there even a legitimate use for this service? It would seem on the face of it that there is none.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 27 2019, @05:40AM (4 children)
The legitimate use would be to allow private transactions.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @05:55AM
That has to be banned, because some people will do Bad Things if we allow privacy. And, as we all know, everyone's ability to have privacy should be taken away when it's most convenient for the government.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday May 27 2019, @06:33AM (1 child)
Disagree. You're not transacting privately with other people - you're washing your dirty Bitcoins and giving them back to yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @06:02PM
there's no such thing as a dirty bitcoin. only people who may have broken the law who have bitcoins.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Monday May 27 2019, @10:07AM
Yes, didn't Dash have something like this as a built-in feature?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 27 2019, @06:15AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @07:21AM
So do most things. Wanting privacy and anonymity is not bad, even though Bad Guys benefit from them too.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Monday May 27 2019, @06:36AM (1 child)
So if you're a couple transactions down the blockchain from an illegal one, does this mean that those coins can be attached to you, and subsequently seized? Like if they, say, found a way to chemically distinguish various manufactures of cocaine [cnn.com], trace them back to individual drug cases, and then seize the money as being used as part of an illegal transaction? It's kind of a reach, but maybe not that far of one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @02:25PM
Most governments consider any blockchain transactions as hiding something illegal. So you don't have to worry about proximity ... just surveillance.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by bradley13 on Monday May 27 2019, @11:00AM (7 children)
I have a naive question: Why, exactly, is money laundering illegal?
Consider: I have a $10 bill, you have something of value, and we agree to swap. Further suppose that I want to get rid of my $10 bill because it's stolen. You are guilty of money laundering...when? It depends on what you know, and what you are thinking when you accept the exchange. In other words, money laundering presumes to know what is going on in your head - it is basically a thought crime.
It's really no different from the bank reporting requirements in the US: A bank is required to report any transaction of $10k or more. Avoiding those reporting requirements by depositing just under $10k is a crime. People have been prosecuted for this "crime" even when they truly happened to have just under $10 to deposit. So it's again an almost unprovable thought crime: a perfectly legal act (making a deposit) suddenly becomes criminal based on what you are thinking.
OTOH "mens rea" is (or should be) an important part of law. If you do something illegal without knowing that the act is illegal, that should count for something. You bought lobsters in the wrong kind of packaging - but had no idea there was a law about lobster packaging? Innocent. I can see mens rea as a tool for the defense - but for crimes like money laundering (i.e., ordinary financial transactions), I don't think it should be a tool of the prosecution. Laws need to be more objective than that.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @12:38PM (1 child)
It's not necessarily the person who wants to launder his money, its the launderer as well. It's like aiding and abetting criminals.
E.g. your buddy steals a car, you sell it as a regular car in your garage and give him part of the money. You laundered the stolen car into clean cash. You are also aiding criminal activity of stealing cars, you may not have stolen a car, like the getaway driver didn't rob the bank but surely was complicit.
When the launderers clean money, they are doing the same/similar.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday May 28 2019, @04:47PM
It's not like aiding and abetting. It is aiding and abetting, by intentionally providing a route for ill gotten gains to be accepted by the rest of the financial system which otherwise would have a duty to report or question it.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @02:37PM
Not quite. Playing dumb (aka willful ignorance) does not prevent you from being a criminal participant in money laundering. If your friend pops up with a lot of money out of the blue, and any reasonable person (and even some posters here on SN) would know that the money is of a questionable source, then you lose plausible deniability.
A thought crime is when you think about doing something illegal but don't actually do it. Your take on money laundering is doing something illegal but it's only a crime because you thought or knew it was illegal when you did it. Your position is basically "never learn any of the laws and you can't be responsible for breaking them."
Not quite. If your intent is to purposely deposit just under $10k to avoid scrutiny then you are willfully attempting to skirt the law. Doing it once won't get you much (if any) attention. But doing it repeatedly establishes your knowledge and intent to hide the transactions. Your actions (purposely trying to avoid reporting requirements) are illegal, which brings into question the source of the money you are trying to hide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @02:51PM
> You bought lobsters in the wrong kind of packaging ...
Lobsters best bought from a tank, still alive, no packaging required.
Maybe someone can find an analogy here?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @06:04PM (2 children)
it's a bullshit crime. just because i accept your money doesn't mean i condone how you got it or have a clue how you earned every single dollar. it's ridiculous on it's face, but people are pitiful, bootlicking slaves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @08:28PM
They should be money-laundering the old-fashioned way, with Real Estate and the Russian mob. Just saying. The Zurich connection?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday May 28 2019, @04:50PM
Not really. Accepting dirty money that you know is dirty does indeed condone the act done to acquire it. You do not need to know how I earn "every single dollar," but you do have the same reasonable duty that everyone else has to not accept money that you know (or should have known) came from criminal activity. In other words, no you're not allowed to be special and just close your eyes in a circumstance where the average reasonable person wouldn't. Sorry. (Well no, I'm not....)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday May 27 2019, @11:14AM (4 children)
Somebody cares to elaborate how this works? My guess would be that it is an ordinary exchange and depends on the fact that cross-coin transactions are only known to bestmixer. Maybe they delete logs after transactions are confirmed enough in the respective blockchains?
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Monday May 27 2019, @12:38PM (3 children)
The basic principle of a mixer is that they combine multiple transactions, so that simple totals can no longer be followed. They may muddle the waters even more by using multiple crytocurrencies.
Without a mixer: You have 10BTC. If you transfer those to some other wallet, they are still 10BTC and can be traced back to your wallet. If you split them and transfer them, I can still follow the (smaller) amounts. Ultimately, you want your money back, so somewhere there will be one or more end wallets that are yours. It's not a difficult trail to follow.
With a mixer: You have 10BTC, and transfer them to the mixer. So do 99 other people. Now the mixer has 1000 BTC from 1000 different accounts. They transfer these 1000BTC, in random-sized increments, to hundreds of different wallets, over some period of time. Those wallets make further transfers, to thousands of other wallets, which in turn transfer to...you get the idea. Now, somewhere in there you have (say) three end wallets, with different amounts that add up to your 10BTC minus fees. Which ones are yours? How do I prove it? It's now almost impossible to figure out.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday May 27 2019, @12:56PM (2 children)
Thanks, that clarifies it a bit. I do not get the part with the small increments though, as when coins coalesce in a few wallets it is no (or no big) problem to trace them back through the small increments, so that would be just a bit of obfuscation. The transition to another coin I see as true anonymization. In this case, however, the mixer would function as an exchange and would have to trusted by whoever wants to use its service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @06:50PM (1 child)
So who are these 99 other folks?
If the purpose of the exchange is to hide ill gotten gains, then law enforcement could just track everything that comes thru the exchange to get a list of suspects.
Perhaps the reason it works is you would end up with a list of crimes and a list of the folks who did them, but not know who did what, so not be able to prosecute?
If they have the servers and the code that randomly split up the transactions, perhaps the randomness was not perfect and can be backed out even if the transaction logs are long gone.
Should be an interesting show.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday May 28 2019, @03:41PM
It doesn't matter who the 99 others are, but they're most likely just random people that use the exchange for legitimate transactions. The problem is that the exchange was using their position to launder known bad money, into squeaky clean money. Most likely, the known bad money, didn't have a known owner. Thus, why you'd want to know who cashed out those coins, but when laundered in such a way, it makes it nearly impossible to find.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @06:07PM
Why can't useless pigs get jobs? Too busy extorting/stealing from working people?