When Europe’s payment institutions (PIs) and electronic-money institutions (EMIs) still show structural AML/CFT weaknesses, it’s reckless to assume stablecoin issuers—often EMIs themselves—will perform better. Any bank offering operating, reserve or settlement accounts to a fiat-backed stablecoin issuer faces two rails (fiat + on-chain). Both must be managed to AML standards—or
Late last night, a federal jury in New York delivered an interesting decision in the fight against crypto‑enabled money laundering. Roman Storm, co‑founder of the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash, was found guilty of operating an unlicensed money‑transmitting business—a conviction of a decentralized mixer operator in the United States. While the
Investors lost a record $5.6 billion to crypto-related financial crime in 2023, up 45 per cent from 2022, according to a report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) published recently. While the number of cryptocurrency-related complaints received by IC3 represents only about 10 per
Crypto assets, hailed as a remarkable innovation, have become a perfect vehicle for fraud. Crypto assets opened the door to a shockingly high level of fraud. The lack of regulatory oversight about crypto assets contributes to the issue. Crypto assets have a different status in different jurisdictions. Even with recovery
Often, when victims transfer cryptos to investment scammers or pay ransoms to hackers, the funds end up in a Binance wallet. This trend has been noticeable since the crypto exchange’s inception in 2017, suggesting that the platform has been accommodating to criminals. We have been closely monitoring the business’s activities
Mercuryo’s SLAPP against EFRI As of 24 April 2023, the mercuryo group initiated a SLAPP – Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation – against EFRI and its board members for defamation reasons. The Austrian lawyer BINDER GRÖSSWANG represented them in court. The request for a preliminary injunction pertains to a table
Over the last decades, the world has witnessed increasingly massive cybercrime attacks across borders. These crimes are very often facilitated by supervised financial entities, crypto exchanges. With the European financial supervisory authorities being very reluctant to take decisive action against payment companies involved in fraud scams, the harm done continues
MiCA as part of the Digital Finance Package of the European Union The European Parliament adopted the new Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on markets in crypto-assets (MiCAR) in March 2023. According to the announcement the main goals for MiCAR are: Protecting consumers Creating regulatory harmonization, closing regulatory arbitrage loopholes and allowing
Crypto scams are a plague Although we are in a crypto winter with the crash on the markets also driving down the crypto valuations, we still receive emails from victims about scammers trying to convince them to invest in promising crypto ventures. So, crypto scams are still a plague, and
