Crypto wallet Cryptonator has been shut down by United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) alongside the German police, The Register reports.
Cryptonator was a managed wallet that allowed remote crypto storage, transfer, and exchange. The platform prided itself on not requiring any user identity verification.
IRS special agent Justin Allen wrote in a testimony that Cryptonator wallets received and sent $71 million to and from entities sanctioned by US authorities. An additional $54 million processed by these wallets was hacked or stolen funds and $25 million was linked to deep web transactions. Lastly, over $8 million was linked to ransomware campaigns.
A service aimed at criminals
Court documents state that the exchange service took a 0.9% fee out of merchant transactions. A criminal indictment filed by Federal authorities in Tampa in late January reads:
The operation of Cryptonator involved an international money laundering scheme that, by virtue of its business model, catered to criminals. […]
Cryptonator facilitated crimes, including but not limited to, computer hacking, ransomware, fraud, and identity theft. Since its founding Cryptonator received criminal proceeds of, among other crimes, numerous computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, various fraud markets, and identity theft schemes.”
Cryptonator’s CEO Roman Boss is a Russian citizen and German resident who set up the service in December 2013. In July 2021 an FBI operative registered an account and spent around $4,195 on the deep web. The wallet facilitated those transactions and Boss promised that the transactions would be obscured via mixing.
In September another FBI agent operating undercover as a ransomware affiliate also leveraged Cryptonator to launder the proceeds. This resulted in the agent receiving Bitcoin (BTC) worth $14,500 in two transactions.
Boss faces accusations of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Department of Justice and IRS request his arrest and forfeiture of crime proceeds.
