US sanctions Russia's largest darknet market and crypto exchange Garantex
The United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has announced it will impose sanctions on darknet market Hydra and virtual currency exchange Garantex. In a Tuesday announcement, the Treasury Department said it had worked with the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue […]
Eastern European victims sent $815M to Ponzis and scams in the past year
Recent research has revealed that Eastern Europe remains a very high source of cybercrime activity — both from victims to scams, and from users to darknet markets — in the cryptocurrency sector. Cryptocurrency addresses based in the Eastern European region have the second-highest exposure to illicit activity after Africa, according to a report published on […]
Digital intelligence must overcome challenges to solving crypto crimes
While the value of cryptocurrencies has varied wildly in the last year, this has not diminished crypto’s attractiveness to criminals. Many of them are moving their illegal activities underground and outside the view of law enforcement. Because of the public nature of most blockchains, however, this rapid movement shouldn’t be a major concern to law […]
Crypto criminals got away with $5B less in 2020 as scam revenue falls
Revenue from crypto-related crime dropped by more than half in 2020 according to Chainalysis’ annual report on the subject. Cybercriminals netted around $5 billion less than the $10 billion plus they got away with in 2019, representing a 53% fall. Transactions involving illicit funds have decreased even more rapidly than the total volume of those […]
Darknet market link provider claims its Bitcoin donors’ accounts were frozen
The administrator of dark.fail, a website providing verified links to darknet markets, claims that exchanges are unfairly closing accounts donating Bitcoin to the service after implementing a Chainalysis transaction flagging system. The admin alleged in a tweet that two donors of Bitcoin to the website had their accounts blocked by exchanges that recently implemented Chainalysis’ […]