{"id":122115,"date":"2023-11-22T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T10:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/11\/22\/doj-charges-binance-with-vast-money-laundering-scheme-and-sanctions-violations\/"},"modified":"2023-11-22T10:43:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T10:43:00","slug":"doj-charges-binance-with-vast-money-laundering-scheme-and-sanctions-violations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/11\/22\/doj-charges-binance-with-vast-money-laundering-scheme-and-sanctions-violations\/","title":{"rendered":"DOJ Charges Binance With Vast Money Laundering Scheme and Sanctions Violations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">US prosecutors claim Binance processed around $275 million in both deposits and withdrawals to BestMixer, a cryptocurrency \u201cmixing\u201d service designed to make cryptocurrency transactions harder to trace before Dutch law enforcement shut down that service in May of 2019 as part of a money laundering investigation. The charging document goes on to allege that Binance users included ransomware gangs, hackers who had plundered crypto from other exchanges, and scammers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">For years after its founding in 2017, the prosecutors say, Binance had virtually no know-your-customer requirements, in violation of US money laundering laws, despite offering its services to US users. In the indictment against Zhao, he\u2019s accused of encouraging the company to operate in a \u201cgrey zone,\u201d telling employees that it was \u201cbetter to ask forgiveness than permission.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Even once Binance appeared to enact more stringent know-your-customer rules for users in 2021, the indictment alleges, the company often ignored sanctions violations or knowingly allowed users to circumvent its money laundering checks. More than 12,500 users, the indictment claims, listed Iranian phone numbers on their accounts but were allowed to continue trading on the exchange.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cIran is very tricky,\u201d a Binance staffer wrote in an internal communication at one point, according to the indictment. \u201cWe definitely do not want to acknowledge we have them onboard \u2026 our official stance is we gotten rid of all of them [sanctions] and blocked.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Binance\u2019s investigations and compliance team, according to the charging document, was instructed to check on a user\u2019s \u201cVIP level\u201d before banning their account for violations\u2014or to even give VIP users new accounts despite known violations. In one internal conversation, a Binance staffer allegedly told another to warn a VIP user to \u201cbe careful with his flow of funds, especially from darknet markets like hydra,\u201d according to the indictment. Prosecutors add that the user \u201ccan come back with a new account [but] this current one has to go, it\u2019s tainted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Rumors and reports of Binance\u2019s use by criminals have circulated for years. Reuters reported in June of 2022 that Binance had enabled more than $2.35 billion in money laundering by hackers and drug traffickers, which Binance denied. In December of last year Reuters wrote that the Department of Justice was considering criminal charges against the company.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The charges and settlement come on the heels of the fraud conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, which once rivaled Binance as one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. \u201cIn just the past month, the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted the CEOs of two of the world\u2019s largest cryptocurrency exchanges in two separate criminal cases,\u201d\u00a0Garland said in Tuesday\u2019s press conference. \u201cThe message here should be clear: using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US prosecutors claim Binance processed around $275 million in both deposits and withdrawals to BestMixer, a cryptocurrency \u201cmixing\u201d service designed to make cryptocurrency transactions harder to trace before Dutch law enforcement shut down that service in May of 2019 as part of a money laundering investigation. The charging document goes on to allege that Binance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>DOJ Charges Binance With Vast Money Laundering Scheme and Sanctions Violations - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/11\/22\/doj-charges-binance-with-vast-money-laundering-scheme-and-sanctions-violations\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DOJ Charges Binance With Vast Money Laundering Scheme and Sanctions Violations - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"US prosecutors claim Binance processed around $275 million in both deposits and withdrawals to BestMixer, a cryptocurrency \u201cmixing\u201d service designed to make cryptocurrency transactions harder to trace before Dutch law enforcement shut down that service in May of 2019 as part of a money laundering investigation. 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