Europol cracks down on another coin mixer, seizes $47 million in Bitcoin
Coin mixers, which allow users to obfuscate their transactions, have been the target of law enforcement agencies around the world. ChipMixer is the latest to face a similar attack.
In an operation carried out by German and US authorities, and supported by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), the police seized four servers, around 1909.4 Bitcoins in a series of 55 transactions (almost $47 million), and 7 TB of data from the crypto-mingling service for its alleged involvement in money laundering activities.
Other national authorities involved in the operation include the cantonal police in Zurich, Poland’s central cybercrime agency, as well as Belgium’s federal police.
Targeting ChipMixer
According to the press release, Europol revealed that ChipMixer is an unlicensed cryptocurrency mixer set up in mid-2017, which was available on both the clear and dark web.
The joint investigation revealed that ChipMixer allegedly laundered 152,000 Bitcoins, a majority of which is linked to dark web markets, ransomware groups, illegal commodity trading, acquisition of child sexual exploitation material and stolen crypto assets.
The European Law Enforcement Agency further stated that it was the crackdown on Hydra Market’s dark web platform that helped them uncover transactions worth millions of euros.
ChipMixer’s service was allegedly used by prominent ransomware actors such as Zeppelin, SunCrypt, Mamba, Dharma or Lockbit to launder ransoms they had received.
“Authorities are also investigating the possibility that some of the crypto assets stolen following the bankruptcy of a major crypto exchange in 2022 were laundered via ChipMixer.”
Illegal use of coin mixers
Cryptocurrency mixing platforms or tumblers essentially work by receiving digital assets from users, mixing them with other coins, and then sending a corresponding amount of “mixed” coins to a recipient address, thus obscuring the connection between sender and receiver. ChipMixer worked in a similar way. That would turn the deposited funds into “chips”, which were then mixed together to hide all traces of where the original funds originated.
These tumblers mostly have legitimate use cases. But the fact that these services have become attractive tools for cybercriminals, law enforcement has increased its efforts to crack down on the same.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) accused Tornado Cash of facilitating users to launder billions of dollars in digital assets, including $455 million allegedly stolen by notorious North Korean hacker Lazarus. The sanctions froze US assets held by Tornado Cash and prohibited companies and individuals in the country from doing business with them.
