Bittrex, Inc. is a company based in Bellevue, Washington that provides an online virtual currency exchange and hosted wallet services. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) alleged that Bittrex violated programs for sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, as well as Ukraine-related. More specifically, according to OFAC, Bittrex failed to prevent persons apparently located in the sanctioned jurisdictions from using its platform to engage in over $263 million worth…
BitMEX is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platforms. On August 10, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a Consent Order that the U.S Commodities Futures and Trading Commission agreed to with five companies charged with operating BitMEX. The order requires the BitMEX entities to pay a $100 million civil monetary penalty and provides that up to $50 million of the penalty may be offset by payments…
On June 24, 201, the United States Department of Justice brought a criminal bill of information against Michael Yusko III. According to the DOJ, under U.S. federal law, any business that engages in “the acceptance of currency, funds, or other value that substitutes for currency from one person and the transmission of currency, funds, or other value that substitutes for currency to another location or person by any means” is deemed to be a money…
The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) released a notice on December 31, 2020 (the “December 31 Notice”) stating that it will propose amendments to regulations of the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) bearing on non-U.S. account holdings of virtual currency. FinCEN is a bureau of the U.S. Department of Treasury that, among other things, collects and analyzes information about financial transactions in order to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial…
October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Thus, on October 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence issued a pair of advisories to assist U.S. individuals and businesses in efforts to combat ransomware scams and attacks, which continue to increase in size and scope. As Treasury explained, anti-money laundering and sanctions regulations implemented and enforced by Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence may have implications for persons involved in…
On May 13, 2020, Kenneth A. Blanco, the Director of the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) delivered a speech at the ConsenSys Blockchain Conference. As Mr. Blanco notes in his speech, FinCEN is the primary regulatory and administrator of the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”), which serves as the legal architecture for anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing in the U.S. FinCEN collects and analyzes information about financial transactions in order to combat domestic and…
On May 9, 2019, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued guidance on the application of Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations, specifically those regulations applicable to money services businesses (MSBs), to certain business models involving the transmission of convertible virtual currencies (CVCs) (the “Guidance”). The Guidance follows previous interpretive guidance issued by FinCEN in 2013 relating to transactions involving the acceptance of currency or funds and the transmission of CVC. Also on May 9,…
On April 18, 2019, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an arm of the U.S. Department of the Treasury assessed a civil money penalty against Eric Powers for willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act’s (BSA) registration, program, and reporting requirements. This was FinCEN’s first enforcement action against a peer-to-peer virtual currency exchanger and the first instance in which it has penalized an exchanger of virtual currency for failure to file Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs). Powers advertised his…