The FBI and Ukrainian police have announced the closure of nine cryptocurrency exchanges for facilitating money laundering by fraudsters and cybercriminals, including ransomware operators. In a joint operation, the servers of the following resources located in the USA, Ukraine and several European countries were seized: 24xbtc.com, 100btc.pro, pridechange.com, 101crypta.com, uxbtc.com, trust-exchange.org, bitcoin24.exchange, paybtc.pro and owl.gold.
These exchanges offered support and instructions in English and Russian, and had inadequate measures in place to combat money laundering. They collected minimal information about their customers, if any. The FBI stated that these exchanges are “important nodes in the cybercrime ecosystem” and “knowingly support the criminal activities of their clients and become complicit in their criminal schemes”.
Law enforcement officials are now analyzing the infrastructure of the seized sites and attempting to identify cybercriminals who laundered money through these resources.
