Arrested European gang laundered $1.24 billion, converted it all in Bitcoin

Messages in the media tell about a criminal gang arrested in Spain for money laundering totalling to $1.24 billion. Such a big sum has been acquired through hack attacks on various banks. Bank managers received phishing email messages and through their technical incompetence, the hackers breached the security of banks.

As described by journalists, the gang was mainly of Russian and Ukrainian nationals. They preferred to convert the stolen funds in Bitcoin, probably thinking it would be hard to trace the origins of funds. Then they purchased real estate and luxurious goods.

The amount of the sum they have managed to steal and launder is also explained by the large time period of their cybercrime-related activities: they stayed free for five years after they first started to steal money from banks.

Meanwhile in Russia, another mastermind of a great fraudulent scheme has lately passed away. Sergey Mavrodi was mainly involved in classic non-crypto pyramids, the most famous of them dating back to the 1990s, but during the recent years he has shown interest towards Bitcoin too. Bobby Lee, prominent Chinese investor, BTCC leader and brother of Litecoin creator, even had to issue a special warning against Mavrodi’s MMM in 2015.

Image courtesy of alicanteturismo.com