FinCEN has fined the operator of early crypto mixers Helix and Coin Ninja for Bank Secrecy Act violations.
The creator and operator of some of those earliest"mixing" services in crypto will have to cough up $60 million into United States regulators, even as he faces continuing criminal charges.
Harmon was detained in February for operating a steady of tumblers, or mixers, that Washington, D.C. prosecutors allege constitute unregistered money services companies. Those charges against him say he laundered around $300 million in Bitcoin. According to today's announcement,"FinCEN's ***ysis has identified 356,000 bitcoin transactions through Helix."
Mixing services attempt to privatize cryptocurrencies by sending them via a huge series of transactions involving a variety of wallets. The process aims to obscure the origins of coins in addition to the entity accountable for these when they come from mixing. Harmon's mixers were only available via the dark net.
FinCEN claims that Harmon deliberately flaunted the provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act, the basis of U.S. Anti-Money Laundering legislation. It had been offenses of the BSA which led to criminal charges from the executive group of crypto exchange BitMEX before this month.
U.S. authorities are on the prowl for criminal action according to crypto. The Department of Justice recently released a report that highlighted privacy Teams such as Monero (XMR) as a cause for alarm.
My blog post:
Xmr mixer