Operation Final Exchange: Police shut down criminal money laundering platforms
Together with other authorities, the Federal Criminal Police Office shut down almost 50 money laundering platforms. Ransomware groups were also among the users.
(Image: Screenshot heise online)
The police have shut down 47 "exchange services" hosted in Germany. These were platforms for money laundering. There it was possible to exchange conventional fiat money such as euros and cryptocurrencies. The criminal websites included Bankcomat.com –, which has been around since 2012 –, and CoinBlinker.com. This was reported by the Public Prosecutor General's Office in Frankfurt am Main, or rather its Central Office for Combating Cybercrime, and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
The reason given by the BKA for the shutdown is the "inadequate implementation of legal requirements to combat money laundering on a large scale, concealing the origin of criminally obtained funds and thus making themselves liable to prosecution for money laundering" and operating criminal trading platforms on the Internet. In this way, anonymous "exchange transactions without registration process and without verification of identity" were possible.
Ransomware gangs were among the users
Users of the platforms also included ransomware groups, darknet traders and botnet operators who used such services to introduce extorted ransom money or other criminal proceeds into the regular currency cycle. The BKA and the Central Office for Combating Internet and Computer Crime (ZIT) were able to secure extensive user and transaction data from the shut-down exchange services in the course of the measures, which will be used for further investigations. This data represents valuable investigative approaches in the fight against cybercrime. The websites now redirect to finalexchange.de with a warning or spit out timeouts.
As cyber criminals often operate abroad and are even protected by some countries, they are often unreachable for German law enforcement authorities. The measures are therefore also aimed at weakening and dismantling the infrastructure of cyber criminals, such as the seizure of ChipMixer's server infrastructure or the imprisonment of operators of criminal marketplaces such as Kingdom Market.
(mack)
