An international law enforcement operation has taken down ChipMixer, a dark web “mixer” that helped criminals launder over $700 million, Europol and other policing agencies announced on Wednesday. Amongst its users were North Korean hackers and Russian spies, according to the Department of Justice. ChipMixer charged a small fee to take in clients’ cryptocurrency and spread it across different accounts, in order to complicate law enforcement tracking of criminal proceeds, police said. In total, it processed $3 billion, nearly a billion of which has been traced to crimes, including ransomware incidents and darknet market drug sales, the DOJ said. ChipMixer domains have been taken down, nearly $50 million seized, and the DOJ has charged Minh Quốc Nguyễn, 49, of Hanoi, Vietnam, with allegedly operating the service since 2017. Tom Robinson, founder of cryptocurrency tracking company Elliptic, said it was a “very significant” takedown. “Chipmixer was the largest centralized mixer in operation,” he told Forbes. He pointed to its use by the Lazarus Group, one of North Korea’s most notorious hacking groups, accused of major crypto thefts. That included a breach of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge last year, which saw $540 million stolen, and a hack of Harmony’s Horizon Bridge in 2020, when $100 million went missing.
Full story : Crypto ‘Mixer’ Laundered $700 Million For Customers, Including Russian And North Korean Spies, DOJ Says.
