Authorities Ukraine and US take over nine illegal cryptocurrency platforms

US authorities have taken over several cryptocurrency platforms allegedly misused for money laundering and supporting cybercrime operations. It 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 chapter worked with the Virtual Currency Response Team. The Americans also cooperated with the national digital police service and the public prosecutor 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. Those who visit the websites will see that the domains have been taken over.

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

The authorities therefore suspect the platforms of facilitating money laundering and supporting cybercriminals. Much of the criminal activity on these exchanges revolved around ransomware, as well as other scams and cybercrime. It is not clear why the Ukrainian authorities were involved in the investigation. The nine domains were on servers in America. The websites were available in English and Russian.