Authorities in Ukraine and the US take over nine illegal cryptocurrency platforms

US authorities have taken over several cryptocurrency platforms that are allegedly being misused for money laundering and supporting cybercriminal operations. This concerns nine domains. America cooperated with authorities in Ukraine.

The action became carried out by various authorities at the end of April, the US Department of Justice now announces. A local FBI unit worked with the Virtual Currency Response Team. The Americans also worked with the National Digital Police Service and the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The services have taken nine platforms offline: 24xbtc.com, 100btc.pro, pridechange.com, 101crypta.com, uxbtc.com, trust-exchange.org, bitcoin24.exchange, paybtc.pro and owl.gold. Anyone who visits the websites will see that the domains have been taken over.

According to the Ministry of Justice, these cryptocurrency platforms would allow their customers to make transactions anonymously. This is contrary to Know Your Customer principles that apply to international payment sectors and specifically to US anti-money laundering laws. These require financial institutions to have a certain amount of knowledge about their customers.

The authorities therefore suspect the platforms of facilitating money laundering and supporting cyber criminals. “Much of the criminal activity on these exchanges revolved around ransomware, but also other scams and cybercrime,” the ministry wrote. It is not clear why Ukrainian authorities were involved in the investigation. The nine domains were on servers in America. The websites could be used in English and Russian.