The US government on Thursday imposed sanctions on two cryptocurrency exchanges and indicted a Russian national for his alleged involvement in a series of money laundering services offered to cybercriminals.
Cryptocurrency exchanges Cryptex and PM2BTC are believed to facilitate the laundering of cryptocurrencies that may have been obtained through cybercrimes.
The coordinated action was carried out in cooperation with the Dutch police and the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service of the Netherlands (FIOD) as part of repression by law enforcement agencies continues is called Operation Endgame..
According to the results of the exercises, sites connected however, both exchanges were confiscated and replaced with a law enforcement seizure banner. It also resulted in the seizure of 7 million euros ($7.8 million) worth of cryptocurrency.
“The United States and our international partners remain resolute in our commitment to prevent impunity for cybercrime facilitators like PM2BTC and Cryptex,” said Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith.
“Treasury, in close coordination with our allies and partners, will continue to use all tools and powers to disrupt networks that seek to use the virtual asset ecosystem to facilitate their illicit activities.”
The Treasury Department said that PM2BTC (“btc2pm(.)me”) facilitated the laundering of convertible virtual currency (CVC) linked to ransomware and other illegal entities operating in Russia. Effective since 2014.
It is also reported to have provided direct CVC to ruble exchange services but failed to implement effective anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) programs as required by US federal law.
“PM2BTC facilitates a significantly higher proportion of transactions with a clear link to money laundering related to Russian illicit financing compared to 99 percent of other virtual asset service providers,” it said. “PM2BTC uses unusual obfuscation that prevents attribution of transactions to illegal activities and entities.”
Cryptex (“Cryptex(.)net”), in a similar vein, was accused advertising virtual currency services directly to cybercriminals, generating more than $51.2 million in illicit revenue from ransomware attacks. Additionally, account registration claimed “complete anonymity.”
It is also estimated to have received at least $720 million in transactions related to illegal services used by Russian ransomware actors and cybercriminals, including scam shops, mixing services, no-KYC exchanges, and now sanctioned virtual currency exchanges . Garanteks.
44-year-old Russian Sergei Sergeyevich Ivanov (aka UAPS or TALEON) has been accused of professionally laundering money in cyberspace for nearly two decades, as well as providing his services, including Cryptex and PM2BTC, to other e-criminal groups and drug traffickers.
Ivanov’s other charges include facilitating payment processing on the Rescator card website and laundering illegal funds obtained from Joker’s stashanother popular carding forum that voluntarily ceased operations in February 2021.
There are two such payment processing services PinPays and UAPS (“uaps(.)so”) which stands for Universal Anonymous Payment System and facilitated payments for several fraudulent stores such as Genesis MarketBriansClub/Brian Dumps and Faceless, according to Chainalysis.
“UAPS and Cryptex have processed more than $7.5 billion in transactions since their inception in 2013 and 2018, respectively,” the blockchain research firm said. noted.
Elliptic, another blockchain exploration firm, said he is aware of “thousands of additional addresses” associated with Cryptex, PM2BTC, PinPays, and Joker’s Stash, in addition to the four cryptoasset addresses listed by the Treasury Department as being associated with Cryptex.
A second Russian, 38-year-old Timur Shakhmametov, is also accused of running Joker’s Stash and laundering its proceeds. A card marketplace that offered for sale data from nearly 40 million payment cards annually. The service is estimated to have generated between $280 and more than $1 billion in revenue for threat actors.
Simultaneously with these actions, the US State Department spoke announced rewards of up to $10 million each for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Timur Shakhmametov and Sergey Ivanov.
An additional $1 million is also available for providing information that will help identify other key participants associated with UAPS, PM2BTC, PinPays, and Joker’s Stash.
“One of the most important tactics in stopping illegal actors is disrupting the infrastructure they abuse to facilitate money laundering and other transnational cybercrimes,” Chainalysis said.
“Today’s action represents a continuation of (the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s) efforts to work with key international partners to make the Internet safer by shutting down fraudulent services and the infrastructure that hosts them.”
