Europol shuts down Cryptocurrency Tumbler services
The Dutch Financial Criminal Investigative Service, in the Netherlands, Europol and the authorities in Luxembourg have seized six servers hosting, Bestmixer.io, in a crackdown.
Bestmixer.io is the largest Bitcoin mixing or tumbling service provider. These services enable cryptocurrency users to pool or mix their cryptocurrencies with those of other parties and then withdraw equivalent sums for a fee.
Europol reported that the service, which launched in May 2018, mixed approximately 27,000 bitcoins. most of the money that passed through Bestmixer.io had a criminal origin or destination. The agency suggested that “in these cases, the mixer was probably used to conceal and launder criminal flows of money.”
The agency revealed that,
“The Dutch FIOD has gathered information on all the interactions on this platform in the past year. This includes IP-addresses, transaction details, bitcoin addresses, and chats messages. This information will now be analyzed by the FIOD in cooperation with Europol and intelligence packages will be shared with other countries.”
Internet security company McAfee supported the operation and advocated that Bestmixer should be closed.
Dave Jevans, CipherTrace CEO, said”
“Bestmixer has blatantly advertised money laundering services, and falsely claimed to be domiciled in Curacao where they claimed it was a legal service. The reality is that they were operating in Europe and services customers from many countries around the world.”
Europol’s statement, reveals that the agency is yet to complete the investigation and the authorities are following up on the information received this week.
