The latest action was made against Anthony R. Murgio and Yuri Lebedev of West Palm Beach Florida. The duo has been arrested for running an unlicensed Bitcoin exchange.
According to the press release the FBI the two men are being charged for operating this exchange through a "phony front-company and, at times, a federal credit union that Murgio acquired for purposes of the scheme":
"Since at least late 2013, MURGIO, LEBEDEV, and their co-conspirators have knowingly operated Coin.mx, a Bitcoin exchange service, in violation of federal anti-money laundering (“AML”) laws and regulations, including those requiring money services businesses like Coin.mx to meet registration and reporting requirements set forth by the United States Treasury Department. Through Coin.mx, MURGIO, LEBEDEV, and their co-conspirators enabled their customers to exchange cash for Bitcoins, charging a fee for their service. In doing so, they knowingly exchanged cash for people whom they believed may be engaging in criminal activity. MURGIO and his co-conspirators have also knowingly exchanged cash for Bitcoins for victims of “ransomware” attacks, that is, cyberattacks in which criminals (here, distributors of the ransomware known as “Cryptowall”) electronically block access to a victim’s computer system until a sum of “ransom” money, typically in Bitcoins, is paid to them. In doing so, MURGIO, and his co-conspirators knowingly enabled the criminals responsible for those attacks to receive the proceeds of their crimes, yet, in violation of federal anti-money laundering laws, MURGIO never filed any suspicious activity reports regarding any of the transactions."
The FBI says that since at least late 2014, Murgio, Lebedev and co-conspirators have operated Coin.mx
By the way, bitcoin has often been blamed for being used for Money Laundering...
Credit: mql5.com
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