Now I just came across this article:
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/01/06/brother-of-criminal-bitcoin-mixing-ceo-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-712-bitcoins-from-irs/Gary Harmon has got some serious balls sneaking his brother's Helix wallet recovery seed to get access to IRS seized funds from his brothers crypto mixing service, Helix. Did he think that he wouldn't get caught by the IRS? Here is a small snippet from the Coindesk article below:
"An Ohio family now has not one but two felons facing potentially lengthy prison sentences for crypto-related crimes.
Cleveland man Gary Harmon, 31, pleaded guilty to one count each of wire fraud and obstruction of justice on Friday for stealing 712 bitcoins from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The bitcoins had been seized by law enforcement from Harmon’s older brother, Larry Harmon – the CEO of darknet crypto mixing service Helix – after his 2020 arrest.
Larry Harmon pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments in August 2021. He was ordered to pay a $60 million civil penalty by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The elder Harmon has not yet been sentenced – as part of his plea agreement, he was required to forfeit his ill-gotten gains as well as turn government informant. According to his lawyers, his cooperation is “active and ongoing.”
But while Larry was cooperating with the government, his younger brother – who was formerly employed by one of Larry’s companies, Coin Ninja – was stealing from it, pilfering crypto from Larry’s forfeited wallets.
According to a newly released memorandum filed by prosecutors in August 2021, Gary Harmon used recovery seed words to recreate numerous wallets that belonged to his brother. In April 2020, he made a series of eight transfers from Larry’s forfeited wallets – Trezor wallets being held in an IRS storage locker – to his own wallets. In total, the younger Harmon brother purloined a total of 712 bitcoins from the IRS – at the time, worth $5.4 million.
Prosecutors said that Gary initially vehemently denied draining his brother’s wallets, even when presented with evidence that he had done so."
You guys might remember when this all went down with Helix in 2021. This article lays out the sentence for Larry Harmon:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/operator-of-helix-bitcoin-mixer-pleads-guilty-11629328791Here is a highlight from that article:
"Mr. Harmon’s case is one of the first involving a cryptocurrency mixer that has resulted in a conviction, according to Ari Redbord, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a former senior adviser at Treasury. The guilty plea shows U.S. law enforcement is pursuing cryptocurrency mixers with connections to the Darknet and illicit activities, while the transparency of blockchain enables them to trace the funds.
“The nature of cryptocurrency is to allow law enforcement to have unique visibility on financial flow where they never had before,” comparing it to government-issued fiat currency, said Mr. Redbord, who is now head of legal and government affairs at TRM Labs Inc., a digital currency tracing firm."
Chip mixer websites out there are currently being watched and tracked for illicit activity showing links to human trafficking, drugs, money laundering etc. They are being watched now more than ever before, as many of the folks on this forum are peddling adds through signature campaigns linked to chip mixers and online casinos it does make you wonder how many of these companies have links to these types of services that the IRS is watching for.
I feel like being anonymous in crypto is virtually impossible for the most part. They should change the name from "paper trail" to "blockchain trail" or something when it comes to crypto because there will always be some sort of trail publicly available to follow the funds, even with a chip mixer. Can someone explain to me how chip mixers work? I still don't fully understand this. And do most chip mixers also have some sort of casino or games along with their mixing service or is it generally separate?
