Have there been any money laundering schemes that used cryptocurrency?

[KiraKillz]

As there are many corrupt wealthy people around the world, such as politicians and crooks, and they would always try to get rid of their cash in many ways such as money laundering. Since there are many ways to get rid of cash ranging from the obvious to the rather obscure. Has anyone used cryptocurrencies in money laundering schemes?
   
I mean considering the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies around the world, I think that it would be a good idea to use it to hide your money by converting cash into cryptocurrency which can only be accessed by yourself and anyone who has knowledge of the secret passcode of your ledger.

Is it possible to do so or the authorities have countermeasures in place in order to catch people red-handed when laundering money through cryptocurrencies.

[abdobe]

As there are many corrupt wealthy people around the world, such as politicians and crooks, and they would always try to get rid of their cash in many ways such as money laundering. Since there are many ways to get rid of cash ranging from the obvious to the rather obscure. Has anyone used cryptocurrencies in money laundering schemes?
   
I mean considering the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies around the world, I think that it would be a good idea to use it to hide your money by converting cash into cryptocurrency which can only be accessed by yourself and anyone who has knowledge of the secret passcode of your ledger.

Is it possible to do so or the authorities have countermeasures in place in order to catch people red-handed when laundering money through cryptocurrencies.

There is a problem of withdrawing money to a card, that is, converting crypto to fiat. Then the question arises from the authorities, where do you get so much income from. When replenishing the account, I do not know cases when the authorities controlled this.

[mocacinno]

yes, it happened before... For example:
https://www.manhattanda.org/da-vance-announces-guilty-pleas-in-2-8-million-internet-drug-ring/

This being said, i'm pretty sure 99% of the people laundering money are using the "old fashioned" ways... Like using a store front or a business. Using crypto is far to complex, and it still requires you to give your dirty money to somebody else face to face so you get crypto currencies in return, these transactions can all be traced, and when you want to spend your "cleaned" money, you need a second interaction with a potential crypto buyer....
Very complicated to do this right, and even if you do, it would probably have been easyer to use other means of money laundering.

Same goes for terrorists, drug buying, weapons purchases.... Sure, there are darknet markets, sure some dealer *might* accept monero, sure a terrorist *might* have some crypto... But i'm pretty sure +90% of all drug/weapon purchases are done with plain old cash.

[Xcode7]

maybe it could have happened because they used crypto technology for abuse, because they hid their funds. the nature of crypto like this can be exploited by people, one example is the concealment of money so that it cannot be known freely by banks. but I have not known the news about this but if only guessed, I have seen it.

[yoseph]

People might have been doing that in the early years but one thing I can say that with the government regulations especially with the KYC being implemented by most of the exchanges it would be extremely difficult for people to launder money and evade taxes with cryptocurrencies anymore

[lobat999]

Is it possible to do so or the authorities have countermeasures in place in order to catch people red-handed when laundering money through cryptocurrencies.

Certainly there would be some kind of anti money laundering countermeasures in place to monitor / detect these kinds of illicit activities just like what happened to the person indicted on the illegal Silk Road marketplace referred in this article .

[blckhawk]

If the exchange is not implementing any KYC policies, and does not care about how much money you're getting into their exchange (assuming that a money laundering scheme would involve large sums of money), then they can probably use cryptocurrencies, especially those top ones such as Bitcoin and Ethereum (because they still need the money to be safe, and not store it on just any shitcoin). However, if the exchange implements KYC or starts asking questions if they have a limit of how much you can exchange, then authorities can contact these exchanges and help them solving the case.

[jtraverso]

People might have been doing that in the early years but one thing I can say that with the government regulations especially with the KYC being implemented by most of the exchanges it would be extremely difficult for people to launder money and evade taxes with cryptocurrencies anymore

But there are exchanges without verification of KYC. I think it is possible to launder a certain amount of money on many exchanges

[xvids]

Yes given the anonymity of crypto I am sure that it is being used to do it.
I don't even think that KYC's from trading could do anything from it,
People could easily bypass it they could submit fake ID's and document or send it little by little to the people that they know.

[Beparanf]

Yes given the anonymity of crypto I am sure that it is being used to do it.
I don't even think that KYC's from trading could do anything from it,
People could easily bypass it they could submit fake ID's and document or send it little by little to the people that they know.

Politician can use any personnel with them to do KYC and just pay them. They might put some of their money in crypto to avoid putting it to the SALN. I guess those who planned not to be loyal in government already put some of their assets in crypto. Some businesses may also use this for their illegal transactions.

Bad people will always find ways to take a good product like blockchain and crypto to be in their favor.

[Linkkoin]

This is exactly why FATF created its guidelines, which potentially can paralyze the whole cryptocurrency market. As well, considering that privacy coins have the anonymous transfer modes, which somehow can break the transaction trace - here is the reason why those privacy coins are treated by authorities of many countries with full hostility, and even forcing exchanges to remove them from the list of available ones.

[cabron]

Some of the people who done it had successfully laundered their money by using someone else to do it. But why should they be doing it with crypto today where they have to deal with regulations. They'd best do it the usual way by having a front business, building a fake business and some products inside I think will help their money come out clean.

[BigBos]

thinking that it is very difficult to follow the transaction trail, and the existence of a mixer system in bitcoin transactions makes many money launderers launder their money using cryptocurrency. So far, I think many people have done something like that. in fact, this is also one of the concerns of the government. because of this, the KYC system is implemented at each exchanger to prevent money laundering.

[YuginKadoya]

I guess there are certain issues like that and that is why the government is against cryptocurrency because in cryptocurrency criminal now have open new pathways for them and new methods of Money laundering and that that way government are certainly concern about it, and it covers up many violations regarding laundering like tax violation, cybercrimes, and other sources with online casino's, financial firms and cryptocurrency is a convenient way for them on clearing up these funds, And as cryptocurrency gain legitimacy I think these certain problems will only continue to grow.

[agentx44]

As there are many corrupt wealthy people around the world, such as politicians and crooks, and they would always try to get rid of their cash in many ways such as money laundering. Since there are many ways to get rid of cash ranging from the obvious to the rather obscure. Has anyone used cryptocurrencies in money laundering schemes?
   
I mean considering the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies around the world, I think that it would be a good idea to use it to hide your money by converting cash into cryptocurrency which can only be accessed by yourself and anyone who has knowledge of the secret passcode of your ledger.

Is it possible to do so or the authorities have countermeasures in place in order to catch people red-handed when laundering money through cryptocurrencies.

There is a possibility that they collaborate their stolen money to crypto so that there would be no trace of the crime they committed but there is also a possibility that nothing like this was ever made. We all know that most of the government all over the world are still against crypto and they are usually clueless on what it is. It could just be an assumption that they do but if a certain official buys from the black market, things like drugs and firearms, they might use crypto as they commit monet laundering at their state.

[gabbie2010]

thinking that it is very difficult to follow the transaction trail, and the existence of a mixer system in bitcoin transactions makes many money launderers launder their money using cryptocurrency. So far, I think many people have done something like that. in fact, this is also one of the concerns of the government. because of this, the KYC system is implemented at each exchanger to prevent money laundering.

Well mixing the coin with a coinmixer would be difficult to trace or track  however on the point of exchanging those coins to fiat would be questioned by the authorities concerned based on the huge amount of money involved that is why money laundering is a quite difficult now based on security measures put in place by many countries.

[MURONDI]

money laundering is not easy even with crypto, especially now that there are many exchanges that require the KYC identity, I think money laundering with money or with crypto is equally difficult except for those who are experts, in my opinion the government's ban on crypto is not due to money laundering, because money laundering was often done before crypto was created.

[TravelMug]

As there are many corrupt wealthy people around the world, such as politicians and crooks, and they would always try to get rid of their cash in many ways such as money laundering. Since there are many ways to get rid of cash ranging from the obvious to the rather obscure. Has anyone used cryptocurrencies in money laundering schemes?
   
I mean considering the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies around the world, I think that it would be a good idea to use it to hide your money by converting cash into cryptocurrency which can only be accessed by yourself and anyone who has knowledge of the secret passcode of your ledger.

Is it possible to do so or the authorities have countermeasures in place in order to catch people red-handed when laundering money through cryptocurrencies.

You can read it here, Bitcoin, crypto-coins, and global anti-money laundering governance.

However, you need to take note though that criminals will be criminals, so regardless of fiat or crypto, they will always find ways to hide their criminal act.

As far as countermeasure goes, I think there's none, because crypto addresses doesn't have any names attached to it, so unless authorities identify an address to criminals syndicates, it's going to be a cat and mouse game.

[crwth]

If you have been aware of what others are saying about Bitcoin, one of it is that it's being used for illegal activities such as money laundering. I'll clarify one thing I've noticed that you said that it's to get "rid" of their cash, but that's not true. Money Laundering, by definition, is to clean dirty money, dirty money as obtained illegally.

One thing I found in common with wealthy people is that they want to spend as little as possible towards taxes because they want to keep it all. And just like mocacinno said, there are portions, but not everyone tried it. Mainly, they use cash, and I agree with mocacinno again with them using Cash instead of digital money.

They are probably using crypto to send money somewhere and find a way to clear Bitcoin. There are a couple of things they could do with that, and it's to use different tumbler/mixing services and unregulated exchanges. This is probably why some people are still uneasy when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

For catching the bad guys, the government could have its division, which specializes in those kinds of things.

[bitvalak]

As there are many corrupt wealthy people around the world, such as politicians and crooks, and they would always try to get rid of their cash in many ways such as money laundering. Since there are many ways to get rid of cash ranging from the obvious to the rather obscure. Has anyone used cryptocurrencies in money laundering schemes?
   
I mean considering the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies around the world, I think that it would be a good idea to use it to hide your money by converting cash into cryptocurrency which can only be accessed by yourself and anyone who has knowledge of the secret passcode of your ledger.

Is it possible to do so or the authorities have countermeasures in place in order to catch people red-handed when laundering money through cryptocurrencies.

In my opinion there must be a culprit, because this is a huge gap that is indeed very able to be used as a one-way money laundering prayer with the crypto nature that is kept secret.
But it will be difficult when the crypto is converted to FIAT, because it is not possible he will use payments with crypto while the number of payments that support crypto is now very limited.