Illicit Finance
Counterproliferation, sanctions evasion, offshore fraud, and the money that moves through all three.
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Do Kwon: $40 billion in losses, $19 million forfeited
2026-09-28 · Illicit Finance Terraform Labs’ founder was sentenced to fifteen years for a fraud the Department of Justice values at over $40 billion in investor…
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The FBI created its own tokens to catch market makers
2026-09-24 · Illicit Finance Ten people at four crypto market-making firms are charged with manufacturing the trading volume that made tokens look alive. The Department of…
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The crypto ATM numbers everyone cites are the same number twice
2026-09-20 · Illicit Finance Two figures for 2025 crypto kiosk losses are in circulation, $333.5 million and $389 million, and they are usually printed as though…
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Samourai Wallet: prosecuting software that never held the coins
2026-09-16 · Illicit Finance Two developers went to prison for running a bitcoin mixer, and one of them received the statutory maximum for the only count…
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Mango Markets: the acquittal that was mostly a venue ruling
2026-09-12 · Illicit Finance A jury convicted Avraham Eisenberg on three counts over a $110 million exploit, and a judge undid all three. Coverage recorded that…
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Who owns the appreciation on seized bitcoin?
2026-09-08 · Illicit Finance Zhimin Qian converted £20.2 million of fraud proceeds into bitcoin, and by the time the United Kingdom seized it the holding was…
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What laundering crypto actually costs you, according to five judgments
2026-08-01 · Illicit Finance One man laundered $311 million and served three years. His brother stole one and a half per cent of that from a…
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Bitfinex: what actually recovered the bitcoin, and why nobody repeats it
2026-08-01 · Illicit Finance The story everybody tells about the largest financial seizure in United States history at the time is that a $500 Walmart gift…
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The passphrase that defeated a federal seizure
2026-08-01 · Illicit Finance The United States government seized a hardware wallet holding thousands of bitcoin and could not open it. Two months later the defendant’s…
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Bybit: the largest theft in the asset class, and the signing interface behind it
On 21 February 2025 roughly $1.46 billion left one of Bybit’s Ethereum cold wallets in a single transaction carrying three valid signatures from the wallet’s own…
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FTX: what happens to your coins when the exchange holding them files Chapter 11
A customer who held one bitcoin at FTX ended up holding a claim valued at $16,871.63, the price the estate fixed as of the petition date.…
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Prime Trust: the custodian that could not open its own wallets
A regulated Nevada trust company lost access to a set of legacy wallets holding customer assets.