US Authorities Arrest Bitcoin Fog Founder for Money Laundering

The US authorities recently arrested the administrator of the infamous Bitcoin Fog darknet network, which helped its clients hide the source and purpose of their crypto assets. As a result, it was possible to launder $336 mon in bitcoins in 10 years. Bitcoin Fog made it possible for users who wanted to hide their crypto transactions to mix them with the transactions of others so that no one verifying the blockchain could track payments.

According to official documents, the suspect of Russian-Swedish origin Roman STERLINGOV was arrested on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Sterlingov charged a fee of 2 to 2.5 percent for transactions on Bitcoin Fog. According to IRS calculations, Sterlingov allegedly earned $8 mln.

While Bitcoin is praised for being a tool for conducting anonymous transactions, it also has another quality that was used to catch the Bitcoin Fog administrator – its transparency. According to the report, the IRS tracked down Sterlingov using a list of personal transactions he conducted in 2011. The transactions were allegedly carried out when setting up the hosting of the Bitcoin Fog server and these transactions were public and open to all participants in the blockchain.

Image: Emerj