A drug dealer on a darknet is accused of laundering $ 136 million in BTC
2 min readU.S. authorities have accused Baltimore residents – Ryan Farac – of laundering 2,933 BTC between October 2019 and April 2021. Interestingly, the man was sent to prison in 2018 and committed criminal activity behind bars.
“Xanaxman” was also involved in laundry and prison
According to The Baltimore Sun, Maryland officials have filed charges against Ryan Farace – also known as “Xanaxman” – for washing 2,933 BTCs in less than three years. According to today’s prices, this amount is more than 136 million dollars.
The criminal and his father are currently serving a 57-month federal sentence for selling alprazolam-a sedative to treat anxiety and panic disorder. The parish operated an infamous darknet market, but was captured by police in 2018. He lost $ 5.6 million he generated from his illegal activities. He also had to hand in his cryptocurrencies of 4,000 BTC.
Investigators are still unaware whether the 2,933 BTCs are part of the initial 4,000 BTCs. They noted that Farace may have owned even more digital assets that the government did not know about.
The 37-year-old convict sought a parole in 2020 on the grounds of ill health and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, officials rejected his request and he remained in prison.
BTC Fog laundered $ 336 million to BTC
It is worth noting that the above case is not an isolated incident. In April, the U.S. Federal Service arrested Roman Sterlingov – the leader of the notorious BTC anonymizer BTC Fog – on suspicion of laundering nearly $ 336 million in digital assets over the past 10 years.
The Russian-Swedish resident allegedly offered services to users who wanted to have their cryptocurrencies as safe and clean as possible. He charged commissions in the range of 2% to 2.5%.
Sarah Meiklejohn – a computer scientist from University College of London – praised the “follow the money” technique used by investigators:
“With blockchain analytics, we say over and over again that all this activity is on this ledger forever, and if you did something wrong 10 years ago, you may be caught and arrested today.”
This event not only reinforces the idea that crypto exchange users give up much of their privacy when registering, but emphasizes that federals can store this data for years.
Blockchain analysis was used only to confirm the volume of BTC Fog over the last 10 years (1.2 million BTC) and to demonstrate that the platform was mixing BTCs sent through it. The rest of the investigation – the part that proved Sterlingov’s guilty – depended on the user databases being stored.
