The U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of Bitzlato's website.
According to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Anatoly Legkodymov, the founder of the Hong Kong-based website Bitzlato, has apparently been detained by American law enforcement.
A joint enforcement action against an international cryptocurrency firm was announced by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Treasury Department today. This inquiry focuses on the Bitzlato bitcoin trading platform, which is registered in Hong Kong. The announcement is made at a time when the cryptocurrency market is going through a lot of change, especially in light of the collapse of the once-dominant cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
The founder of the Hong Kong-based platform Bitzlato, Anatoly Legkodymov, has reportedly been detained by U.S. authorities, according to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. This ends the platform's ongoing support of recognised Russian-related criminal behaviour. In addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Treasury Department, Monaco described coordinating enforcement operations. The operation against a crypto criminal network was dubbed the most significant one undertaken to date by Monaco.
Anyone who still thinks they can evade the law by using cryptocurrencies should stop believing that, according to the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, who was quoted as saying.
The government asserted that BitZlato powered darknet markets and helped with ransomware attacks, which resulted in over 700 million dollars in illegal transactions between 2018 and 2022, both directly and indirectly. The platform was attractive to criminals because it accepted very little in the way of personally identifying information from its users, much like it does with the majority of larger exchanges.
The Russian drug lord Anatoly Legkodymov was apprehended on Tuesday night in Miami on suspicion of operating a money transmission business that failed to adhere to anti-money laundering regulations and carried illicit funds. The 40-year-old crypto tycoon, who presently resides in China, will be brought before the Southern District of Florida U.S. District Court on Wednesday afternoon to answer to the charges.
You can anticipate appearing in a US courtroom to answer for your crimes, whether you violate our laws from China, Europe, or a tropical island, according to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
The announcement was made on Wednesday at noon, and Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general of the United States, along with Brian Turner, the associate deputy director of the FBI, Breon Peace, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Kenneth Polite, the assistant attorney general of the criminal division of the Department of Justice, and Wally Adeyemo, the deputy secretary of the Treasury, presided over a press conference.
