US takes down $3 bln money laundering ring, charges Vietnamese operator

The U.S. Justice Department has taken down ChipMixer, a darknet cryptocurrency service, for laundering $3 billion worth of Bitcoin and charged Minh Quoc Nguyen, the Vietnamese operator of the ring.

According to a Wednesday announcement of the U.S. Justice Department, the violations began from 2017 with activities including ransomware, the darknet market, fraud, cryptocurrency heists and other hacking schemes.

“ChipMixer - one of the most widely used mixers to launder criminally-derived funds - allowed customers to deposit bitcoin, which ChipMixer then mixed with other ChipMixer users’ bitcoin, commingling the funds in a way that made it difficult for law enforcement or regulators to trace the transactions,” the U.S. Justice Department said.

“Beginning in and around August 2017, as alleged in the complaint, Nguyen created and operated the online infrastructure used by ChipMixer and promoted ChipMixer’s services online. Nguyen registered domain names, procured hosting services and paid for the services used to run ChipMixer through the use of identity theft, pseudonyms, and anonymous email providers,” the department noted.

Nguyen is charged with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, money laundering and identity theft, it added. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison.

Later, the FBI put a federal warrant on Nguyen.