The US justice system continues its crusade against cryptocurrency mixing services. A federal grand jury in Georgia has indicted three Russian nationals for their involvement in operating services Sinbad.io and Blender.io, the latter having been sanctioned by the US Justice Department for facilitating the laundering of funds stolen by North Korean hackers.
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Three Russians accused of orchestrating a vast money-laundering network via crypto blenders
Against a backdrop of increasing action against crypto privacy services, the U.S. justice system has announced a new blow to the crypto blender sector. This new indictment specifically targets Roman Vitalyevich Ostapenko and Alexander Evgenievich Oleynikboth arrested last month, as well as Anton Vyachlavovich Tarasov, currently on the run. The three men are accused of exploiting Blender.io and its successor Sinbad.io as a laundering platform.
The Deputy Attorney General Brent S. Wible pointed out that these platforms serve as “safe havens for the laundering of criminal funds”, particularly for ransomware and wire fraud.
Crypto-mixing service faces unprecedented crackdown in US
This case is part of a wider wave of legal action against crypto mixers, tools that are the subject of intense debate in the USA. These services, designed to ensure financial privacy, find themselves at the heart of a controversy due to their potential use for criminal purposes.
The story of Blender.io reveals the scale of this phenomenon. Active from 2018 to 2022, the service was forced to cease operations following sanctions by the US Treasury. Its successor, Sinbad.io, did not escape the vigilance of the authorities, and soon found itself facing similar sanctions for its alleged contribution to illicit activities.
The U.S. justice system is also stepping up action against major players in the industry. On March 12, Roman Sterlingov, founder of Bitcoin Fog, was convicted of money laundering and faces up to 20 years in prison.
In another case, Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash is being prosecuted, although a federal appeals court in November overturned sanctions against the technology itself, ruling that it could not be sanctioned as such.
These cases are fuelling a fundamental debate between the American authorities, which see these services as privileged tools of organized crime, and the defenders of privacy, who consider them essential to the protection of privacy in the crypto ecosystem.
As a journalist at Coinpri, I’ve been captivated by the world of bitcoin and blockchain since 2020. The decentralized aspect of Bitcoin particularly piqued my interest. Since then, I’ve been working constantly to spread my knowledge, hoping one day to see a world where everyone fully enjoys their financial freedom.
