Tagged: illicit activities

January 13, 2026 @ 8:03 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Illicit cryptocurrency transactions reached an all-time high of $158 billion in 2025, according to TRM Labs‘ newly released 2026 Crypto Crime Report. This figure marks a 145% increase from the $64.5 billion recorded in 2024, shattering the multi-year decline observed from 2021 ($85.9 billion) through… Read More

January 9, 2026 @ 8:56 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Illicit cryptocurrency activities surged to unprecedented levels in 2025, with criminal addresses receiving at least $154 billion—a staggering 162% increase from the previous year. This record-breaking figure, driven largely by a 694% spike in funds flowing to sanctioned entities, underscores the growing intersection of digital… Read More

December 7, 2025 @ 4:58 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Longer underground channel lifespans are mirrored by sharply higher blocking rates, prompting fraudsters to explore alternatives. Modern digital messengers, like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and various others, are now often being used for illicit activities. Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence has conducted an in-depth monitoring of more… Read More

November 24, 2025 @ 8:06 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky noted recently that there was a significant increase in the number of résumés and jobs that had been posted on so-called underground forums in Q1 2024 when compared to Q1 2023, and this figure reportedly remained on the same level in Q1… Read More

April 1, 2024 @ 11:33 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has launched COSMIC, the first centralized digital platform to facilitate sharing of customer information among financial institutions (FIs) to combat money laundering (ML), terrorism financing (TF) and proliferation financing (PF) globally. The Financial Services and Markets (Amendment) Act 2023… Read More

January 4, 2024 @ 5:10 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Wirex, a Web3 money platform, announced a significant enhancement in its measures to combat Dark Web activities and money mule threats. The company has reportedly “incorporated ZeroFox’s Dark Web Monitoring tool into its system, creating a unified solution.” This way, a combination of human and… Read More

December 12, 2023 @ 5:38 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Policymakers need a “fuller view” of consequences of illicit flows, including tallies of the fiscal, monetary, financial, and structural costs, according to an update from the IMF. The fight against financial crime isn’t lost, but the world “needs to do more to limit the economic… Read More

November 10, 2023 @ 8:25 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Germany’s Finance Minister Christian Lindner on Thursday (November 9, 2023) called on European Union nations to choose Frankfurt as the seat of the bloc’s anti-money laundering authority (AMLA). Lindner stated that a decision to locate AMLA in Frankfurt is a key move in order to… Read More

October 4, 2023 @ 9:55 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Digital bank Revolut is under scrutiny from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for allegedly allowing money to “leave accounts flagged as potentially being used by scammers.” The Lending Standards Board (LSB) oversees the CRM Code, which is reportedly “the only set of protections requiring… Read More

August 4, 2023 @ 8:01 am By Omar Faridi  |  

A married and aspiring rapper couple from New York City recently pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracies arising from the hack and theft of approximately 120,000 Bitcoin from Bitfinex, a global cryptocurrency exchange. Ilya Lichtenstein, 35, and Heather Morgan, 33, were arrested in February 2022… Read More

August 1, 2023 @ 10:56 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) recently launched a public consultation on a revised framework to strengthen surveillance and defence against money laundering (ML) risks in Singapore’s Single Family Office (SFO) sector. The revised framework will aim to “introduce a harmonized class exemption for SFOs… Read More

July 17, 2023 @ 9:09 am By Omar Faridi  |  

German regulatory authority BaFin has reportedly extended measures at digital bank N26 in an effort to prevent illicit activities. In 2019, BaFin issued an order targeting N26, telling the Fintech to “take appropriate internal safety measures” for the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing…. Read More

July 13, 2023 @ 7:46 am By Omar Faridi  |  

2023 so far has been a year of “recovery” for cryptocurrency after a chaotic 2022, with prices of digital assets like Bitcoin up over 80% on the year as of June 30, the team at Chainalysis noted. And that’s not the only “good news” for… Read More

June 21, 2023 @ 9:33 am By Omar Faridi  |  

The dramatic rise of cryptocurrency theft during the last couple years has become a serious concern for US authorities, who are increasing their efforts to crackdown on bad actors and illicit crypto-related activities. This past year, crypto-focused hackers have reportedly been able to steal around… Read More

April 7, 2023 @ 12:28 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

MEPs approved stricter rules “to close existing gaps in combating money laundering, terrorist financing and evasion of sanctions” in the European Union. This past week, MEPs from the Economic and Monetary Affairs and Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committees “adopted their position on three… Read More

March 30, 2023 @ 8:58 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Indicted FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is reportedly expected to plead not guilty this Thursday to the latest US criminal charges. These new charges include allegedy conspiring to violate campaign finance guidelines and even attempting to bribe Chinese officials. As first reported by… Read More

March 15, 2023 @ 11:17 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Traditional payments monitoring systems often do not detect money mules’ movements as they secure illicit funds from financial institutions. To address this problem, NICE Actimize, a NICE business (Nasdaq: NICE), announced its cloud-first Money Mule Defense Solution designed “to detect, investigate and prevent mule account… Read More

October 12, 2022 @ 10:47 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Binance is pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Binance and the Financial Monitoring Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The agreement “expresses signatories’ mutual interest in the safe development of virtual asset markets in Kazakhstan and creation of a… Read More

July 6, 2022 @ 6:18 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Cellebrite DI Ltd. (NASDAQ: CLBT), which claims to be a leader in Digital Intelligence (DI) solutions for the public and private sectors, and Chainalysis, the blockchain data platform, have launched a partnership to “enable customers to easily identify and assess criminal activity involving cryptocurrency during… Read More

February 24, 2022 @ 3:00 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

SlowMist notes that not too long ago, they had released an update in regards to the Bitfinex incident. The report from SlowMist had covered how the stolen funds had allegedly been laundered using a technique known as “peel chain.” The company reveals that they received… Read More