International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 55

International Journal on Criminology
• December 2017: NiceHash Bitcoin mining cooperative, possibly
Slovenian, was hacked and lost 80 million US dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies.
• January 2018: Japanese platform Coincheck is hacked, losing 530 million
dollars in cryptocurrencies.
• June 2018: South Korean platform Coinrail is hacked, losing 37 million
dollars in cryptocurrencies.
• end of June 2018: South Korean platform Bithumb (the sixth largest
trader in the world in this field) is hacked, losing 27 million dollars in
cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies: Laundering the Proceeds of Crime
According to Europol, some 100 billion euros derived from criminal activity are
laundered every year in the European Union. Of this total, 4 percent (around 5.5
billion euros) corresponds to cryptocurrencies. The police are powerless when it
comes to this type of laundering.
• The UK now has around one hundred ATMs connected to cryptocurrency
exchange platforms, handling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in much the
same way as a normal cash dispensing machine. Each of these Bitcoin ATMs is
used by between ten and twenty customers a day, and according to one survey,
80 percent of them were drug dealers or speculators—or both. The shopkeepers
who manage these ATMs describe a parade of individuals (often teenagers)
“reeking of drugs” (Daily Mail, December 4, 2017) carrying out multiple transactions
of 10-15,000 pounds sterling using wads of fifty-pound notes.
• Japan’s largest yakuza syndicate, the Yamaguchi-Gumi, laundered around
270 million dollars between 2016 and 2018, via multiple small payments in
Monero, Zcash, and others. Even so, this is only a tiny fraction of the yakuzas’
turnover, which is estimated at 6 billion dollars a year, mostly derived from
trafficking synthetic drugs, usury, real estate fraud, stock market scams, and
so on.
• Colombian drug gangs with expertise in high-tech money-laundering have
been using a Finnish Bitcoin platform to send home millions of euros made
from the sale of cocaine in the European Union. This money transfer system
is sufficiently sophisticated to enable the euros to be converted to Colombian
pesos and then forwarded from Europe to banks in Bogotá in little more than
twenty-four hours.
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