Tim McNulty
EUROPOL has helped police in Spain break up an international fraud gang suspected of offering cryptocurrency laundering services to other criminal organisations.
The EU’s police agency said various schemes were used to launder ill gotten gains, including the use of crypto ATMs to deposit criminal cash.
The gang allegedly used a technique called ‘smurfing’ to break up illicit proceeds into smaller amounts to make them harder to trace.
The proceeds then moved through multiple other accounts before being exchanged into cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Guardia Civil arrested eight people in the operation, which followed on from an operation last year when 23 people were arrested in both Spain and Colombia.
It comes as bitcoin worth €37 million was stolen by hackers from one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance.
