Europol supports German and Swiss police in coup against crypto criminals
- With the support of Europol, German and Swiss police authorities managed to dismantle an international crypto money laundering ring last week.
- The focus of the operation was the shutdown of “Cryptomixer”, an illegal Bitcoin mixer. 25 million euros in Bitcoin were confiscated.
In Switzerland, three servers and the domain “cryptomixer.io” were confiscated, as well as over 12 terabytes of data and Bitcoin worth more than 25 million euros. After shutting down the illegal service, law enforcement placed a seizure banner on the site.
Concealing the origin of criminally obtained assets
“Cryptomixer” was a hybrid crypto mixer that was accessible on both the Clear Web and the Dark Web. He concealed the origins of the loot from ransomware hacks and other forms of crypto-crime. Crypto mixers or “crypto tumblers” prevent the traceability of tokens in a blockchain. Such illegal services are the first choice for cybercriminals looking to launder illegal proceeds from a variety of criminal activities such as drug trafficking, arms trafficking, ransomware attacks and credit card fraud. Since its founding in 2016, the service has mixed Bitcoin worth over 1.3 billion euros, thereby concealing their origin.
The funds deposited by the cyber criminals were pooled for a long, random period of time before being redistributed to the target addresses at random times. Many cryptocurrencies maintain a public ledger and record all transactions in it so that they can be traced. Mixing services like Cryptomixer are intended to prevent this tracing and thus obscure the origin of the cryptocurrency.
Mixing services or crypto tumblers offer criminals anonymity and are often used before the laundered assets are sent to crypto exchanges. From there they are exchanged for other cryptocurrencies via ATMs or bank accounts or monetized as FIAT currency.
Support against cybercrime from Europol
Europol facilitated the exchange of information between European police authorities within the framework of the Joint Cybercrime Taskforce (J-CAT), based at Europol headquarters in The Hague. A priority of Europol is to act as a broker of law enforcement knowledge and to provide a hub through which Member States can communicate with each other and benefit from the knowledge of other Member States and Europol.
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