Money laundering

American attorney Mark Scott, who used to work for one of the biggest digital currency Ponzi schemes, OneCoin, is now trying to get an exoneration just three months after his conviction by a U.S court of illicit operations, money laundering and scams.

US prosecutors recently filed an official complaint against presently-nonoperational cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e and alleged cybercriminal Alexander Vinnik, as per a document filed on Thursday last week in California. Alexander also purportedly holds accounts connected with other major illegal activities, such as the hack of another nonoperational exchange Mt. Gox.

Cybercrime, such as online fraud, industrial undercover activities, and the use of cryptocurrency for money laundering, etc. in Italy, is the rapidly increasing malevolent business with the highest margins of diffusion in the future, according to the Global Risk Report 2019 by the World Economic Forum. The country incurred a loss of around €10 billion in 2018.

The rate of illegal activities including money laundering through Bitcoin (BTC), is alarming in Italy and throughout Europe at large. Crypto startup Eidoo, founded by Italians, which allows users to store, convert and spend digital currencies, selected an apartment in 2017 in a building structure that was sequestered for ndrangheta in Chiasso, Switzerland, just 0.4 kilometers from the Italian border.

Crypto currencies such as Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple and others, facilitate money laundering activities by 4% in Europe. In June 2018, the European Union (EU) created the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AML5) to tackle these illegal activities related to virtual currencies including funding terrorism.

Ethereum (ETH), the second bull cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, has a massive number of users but one of them is drawing out another mortgage following a charge of more than 2100 ETH in an attempt to send someone $14 worth of ETH. This fee is abnormal and appears as if it was a mistake, but the customer’s account is still active meaning that the possibilities of making such kind of a mistake is high.

The United Kingdom (UK’s) South East Regional Organized Crime Unit (SEROCU), Europol, Hessen State Police of Germany and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), tactically-technically arrested a 36-year old British man suspected of fraud, money laundering and theft crimes.

Fresh EU rules may be required to strongly safeguard users from cryptocurrency risks, stop money laundering and prevent diverging national regulations from forming unjust contention, European Union regulators revealed on January 9, 2019.

De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank, plans to regulate digital currency firms by demanding they register and acquire valid licenses to start operating.