Russian authorities this week announced the arrest of 96 individuals for their suspected ties with recently disrupted anonymous cryptocurrency exchanges.
Law enforcement agencies in over a dozen regions across the country conducted 148 searches and seized more than 1.5 billion rubles (roughly $16 million), the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) announced. The suspects also owned luxury cars, helicopters, and boats, ICR told media outlets.
The arrested individuals are believed to be linked to the UAPS and Cryptex exchanges, which were disrupted last week by law enforcement in the US and the Netherlands.
UAPS was allegedly created and operated by Russian national Sergey Ivanov, who was indicted in the US last week for his involvement in the operations of the PinPays and PM2BTC crypto exchanges as well.
These payment and exchange services, the indictment alleges, were used to launder proceeds originating from ransomware payments, fraud schemes, and darknet drug deals.
Ivanov, who reportedly was among the individuals arrested this week, was allegedly involved in laundering proceeds from carding websites Joker’s Stash and Rescator as well.
The US seized domains associated with the UAPS and PM2BTC websites, along with those associated with Cryptex, another cryptocurrency exchange service advertised to cybercriminals for providing user anonymity.
According to the US, transactions worth roughly $600 million that were made through Cryptex could be linked to ransomware payments, fraud, and other services used by cybercriminals. Roughly 28% of the bitcoin sent from Cryptex went to entities sanctioned by the US.
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Dutch authorities last week announced that they seized servers hosting PM2BTC and Cryptex, along with over $7 million in cryptocurrency assets.
The US last week announced sanctions against Ivanov and a reward of up to $10 million for information on his whereabouts.