On May 19, 2023, the United States Department of Justice charged a Las Vegas man, Bryan Lee (“Lee”), for his alleged role in the CoinDeal fraud scheme, which involved more than 10,000 victims and $45 million. Lee has been charged with multiple counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property. Lee is the third person to be charged by the DOJ in the scheme, after Neil Chandran …
On September 16, 2022 the White House released its Comprehensive Framework for Responsible Development of Digital Assets (Framework) for how the administration plans to address digital assets as a part of its “whole-of-government approach”, which was first outlined in a March 9 Executive Order (EO) issued by President Joe Biden. In the short-term, the Framework does little to alter the regulatory uncertainty that has allowed many bad actors in the digital asset space to thrive while stymieing responsible growth. There are…
Earlier this month, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges against six individuals, in four separate cases, involved in fraudulent crypto related schemes and thereby further highlighted its commitment to protecting investors and consumers. The schemes involved the following alleged fraudulent acts; NFT Fraud (United States v. Le Ahn Tuan): A Vietnamese national and co-conspirators created an NFT called “Baller Ape” and shortly after the first day of trading, engaged in what is…
On October 6, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the launch of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) “to tackle complex investigations and prosecutions of criminal misuses of cryptocurrency, particularly crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and money laundering infrastructure actors.” Crypto mixing and tumbling services help users reduce traceability by obscuring the sources of their funds. As part of this announcement, the DOJ asserted that cryptocurrency is the “primary…
A mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) is an agreement between countries for the purpose of gathering and exchanging information in an effort to enforce public or criminal laws. It is often used to target crimes such as money laundering and drug trafficking. On November 4, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that, under an MLAT request from Brazil, it had seized virtual currency worth an estimated $24 million. According to documents filed in the…
Earlier this week, crypto-currency watchers noticed that there had been movement of about 70,000 Bitcoin from an account that had been dormant for many years. That mystery has now been solved. The U.S. Department of Justice announced on November 5, 2020 that it had seized the account. At the time of the seizure, the Bitcoin were worth more than $1 billion. According to the allegations of the civil forfeiture complaint, from 2011 until October 2013…
On June 25, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged NAC Foundation, its Chief Executive Officer Marcus Andrade, and political lobbyist Jack Abramoff with conducting a fraudulent, unregistered offering of AML BitCoin, a digital asset security the defendants claimed was a new and improved version of bitcoin. The SEC alleges that Nevada-based NAC Foundation raised at least $5.6 million from more than 2,400 investors by selling tokens that could later be converted to AML…