• ICIJ’s Laundromat investigation tracks the circulation of illicit cryptocurrencies throughout 35 nations.
• Between July 2024 and July 2025, $408 million was leaked from Fuione to a Binance account.
• The FBI estimates that People will lose $9.3 billion to crypto crimes in 2024, a 67% improve from 2023.

The Worldwide Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has revealed “The Coin Laundry,” a cross-border investigation that reveals how crypto corporations have supported a shadow financial system that income from legal exercise. The ICIJ-led venture concerned 113 journalists from 38 media companions in 35 nations.

Over 10 months of reporting, journalists collected a whole bunch of cryptocurrency pockets addresses related to criminality. Reporters collected these addresses from fraud victims, police experiences, court docket information, sanctions lists, and complaints filed with Seychelles’ monetary regulator. The analysis group unraveled tens of hundreds of transactions recorded throughout public blockchains to hint the worldwide monetary flows behind cash laundering networks and cyber heists.

Main exchanges course of suspicious transfers

The investigation revealed that drug traffickers’ cash launderers, Southeast Asian fraudsters, and North Korean hackers have been utilizing main exchanges to switch funds. ICIJ evaluation revealed that in July 2025, Fuione Group was transferring roughly $1 million price of Tether to its Binance account on daily basis. Huione Group is a Cambodian monetary establishment that has been flagged by US authorities as a “main cash laundering concern.”

ICIJ’s investigation discovered {that a} whole of greater than $408 million flowed from Fuione to Binance buyer accounts between July 2024 and July 2025. These transfers occurred whereas Binance was working beneath the supervision of two court-appointed screens after coming into a plea deal in November 2023 for violating U.S. anti-money laundering legal guidelines. Binance has agreed to pay $4.3 billion, one of many largest company fines in U.S. historical past.

The evaluation discovered that at the very least $226 million flowed from Fuione into OKX buyer accounts within the 5 months after OKX pleaded responsible in February to working unlicensed cash switch machines. OKX agreed to pay greater than $504 million in penalties. The transfers from Huoin continued even after it was designated as a serious cash laundering concern in Might.

Cashier networks function unregulated

Laundromat has researched an inventory of money desks and supply companies that permit nameless crypto money withdrawals outdoors of the oversight of economic regulators. These actions, seen in Hong Kong, Toronto, London, Istanbul, and different cities, are a brand new and largely unenforced route for cash laundering.

To uncover the position of cryptocurrencies in supercharge scams, ICIJ investigated alleged pyramid schemes that defrauded victims all over the world. Vladimir Okhotnikov, 47, is accused of stealing at the very least $340 million from traders between 2020 and 2022 utilizing fraudulent cryptocurrency funding platforms.

U.S. prosecutors indicted Okhotnikov in 2023, however he stays free in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. So he continues to launch comparable schemes promoted by way of celebrity-attended occasions and social media campaigns.

In line with an ICIJ evaluation, authorities all over the world have imposed at the very least $5.8 billion in fines towards crypto buying and selling platforms. In the meantime, the FBI estimates that People will lose $9.3 billion to crypto crimes in 2024, a 67% improve from 2023.

Associated: https://currencyjournals.com/doj-confirms-15m-seizure-linked-to-apt38-after-2023-crypto-thefts/