Status: 03/15/2023 5:29 p.m
Investigators estimate that 2.8 billion euros were laundered in cryptocurrencies via the “ChipMixer” service. Now the servers of the service have been confiscated. The Germans worked closely with US authorities.
According to their own statements, German investigators have shut down the world’s top-selling money laundering service for cryptocurrencies. About seven terabytes of data and the equivalent of 44 million euros in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin were confiscated on the servers of the “ChipMixer” service, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime ZIT. The investigators worked closely with US authorities and Europol, it said.
The operators of “ChipMixer” are said to have engaged in commercial money laundering and provided a criminal trading platform on the so-called Darknet. It is estimated that the service has laundered the equivalent of $2.9 billion in Bitcoin since mid-2017.
Sebastian Onion, Attorney General Frankfurt am Main, on success against money laundering platforms on the dark web
tagesschau24 3:00 p.m., 15.3.2023
Laundered crypto money from criminal actions
For this purpose, the operators are said to have divided deposited crypto money into uniform small amounts (“chips”) and then mixed them with the “chips” of other users. With this “mixing” the origin of the crypto values should be disguised. The crypto money was then paid out again.
The values should come from criminal actions such as hacker attacks or fraud. In addition, the authorities suspect that in the course of the bankruptcy of the crypto exchange FTX last year, cryptocurrencies stolen were laundered via “ChipMixer”. “ChipMixer” promised its users complete anonymity.
Probably no arrests
Apparently there were no arrests. The BKA said the main suspect had been offered a reward by the US authorities for the search and for relevant information.
