A Californian man has been given a sentence for using Bitcoin to funnel money from a gloomy web business that sells MDMA.
After pleading guilty to conspiracy to carry out funds fraud and conspiracy to run an unregistered money-transmitting business, John Khuu, 29, of San Francisco, California, was given a 87-month prison sentence.
According to Texas police, Khuu’s business would import German-based MDMA and transact it with Bitcoin for payment on several black web sites. Khuu reportedly had then exchange the Cryptocurrency stored in vendor accounts for U.S. currency and use “hundreds of transactions and dozens of economic accounts” to launder the illicit funds. The person has been charged with unlawfully importing a Schedule I controlled substance and has been indicted differently in the Northern District of California.
The man’s arrest was made as part of Operation Crypto Runner, which was a joint multiyear investigation launched by the Department of Justice ( DOJ), the USSS, and the Postal Inspection Service ( PIS), in November 2022.
In 2022, 21 people were detained as a result of the operation’s role in helping to launder the proceeds of several crypto schemes, including real estate, contact, and love scams. In addition to the federal agency assault, a Montana man was found guilty of crypto income fraud next month.
assault on cryptocurrency income laundering
The federal government’s comprehensive strategy to combat Bitcoin cash fraud is surprising. With over$ 40 billion in cryptocurrency laundries, the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis believes that 2024 was likely the biggest year ever, breaking the previous record set in 2023, which was reportedly the largest ever year.
The company believes the figure may be higher if it were to include money raised from drug dealing, but it is said it is more difficult to track the proceeds of crimes that are “off-chain” and emerge in the real world.
The U.S. Treasury’s risk assessment for 2024 revealed that, despite the prevalence of traditional methods for laundering substance money, using crypto to dirty drug money is becoming more sophisticated and popular.
These are becoming more sophisticated and have a global reach. Mexican organizations operating in the United States “have mutually successful collaborations with China-based money trafficking organizations to dirty drug proceeds and are increasingly using cryptocurrency,” according to the most recent National Drug Threat Assessment released by the DEA.
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