- Drug trafficking actors are utilizing each CEXs and DNMs for gross sales.
- The US authorities held round 200,000 BTC in seized crypto, value $6.69 billion now.
US federal officers seized crypto property value $54 million from a drug ring primarily based in New Jersey, the US Legal professional’s Workplace said on 2 November.
The group of convicted drug sellers owned wallets holding laundered crypto property, the officers mentioned. These proceeds got here from their drug operations between 2010-2015.
The convicts used numerous cryptocurrencies equivalent to Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH], and Ethereum Classic [ETC] to switch the proceeds.
The ring chief of the group was making preparations along with his mates over phone calls to launder 30,000 ETH exterior of the US. The Bahamas was one urged vacation spot.
The worth of the seized 30,000 ETH stood at roughly $54 million.
FBI–Newark Particular Agent in Cost James Dennehy mentioned,
“Our forfeiture motion of $54 million ought to function a lesson to those that mistakenly consider we are able to’t hint their illicit habits or their ill-gotten proceeds.”
Crypto utilization in illicit drug trafficking
Blockchain analytics agency TRM Labs published a report in June 2023, detailing crypto utilization amongst illicit actors together with drug traffickers.
Based on the report, crypto-mediated illicit medicine commerce principally takes place on darknet markets (DNMs).
Supply: TRM Labs
In 2022, DNMs noticed transactions value as a lot as $1.49 billion. Over 80% of this was spent on Russian-language DNMs. A lot of the illicit buying and selling on DNMs entails drug gross sales.
In July 2023, one other main analytics agency Elliptic highlighted the utilization of centralized exchanges (CEXs) for illicit drug gross sales. It discovered crypto property value $32 million—predominantly in BTC and Tether [USDT]—within the CEX wallets of drug sellers this yr.
Supply: Elliptic
There was a 450% year-on-year progress within the variety of particular person funds in 2023.
So, what does the US authorities do with seized crypto?
It’s generally understood that the U.S. Marshals Service auctions seized crypto property for fiat foreign money. The funds are usually transferred to victims or forfeited to authorities treasuries. To this point, the US authorities has sold Bitcoin value $366 million.
Nonetheless, the US authorities has been painfully sluggish to transform its Bitcoin into {dollars}. The Wall Road Journal reported final month that the federal government held round 200,000 BTC, citing an evaluation by the crypto agency 21.co.
Although it estimated the worth of those BTC cash to be $5.3 billion on 15 October, its worth now stood at $6.69 billion after the bull run.
