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Crypto Red Flags for Law Enforcement—How to know if your investigation involves cryptocurrency

According to the US Department of Treasury, since 2013 there has been a consistent decrease in reported bulk cash seizures by agencies throughout the United States. This could be indicative of increased cryptocurrency use by criminals in favor of cash. The lack of cash seizure for known cash intensive activities should be an automatic red flag for…

Best Practices for Monitoring Virtual Currency-Related Transactions at Your Bank

Existing FinCEN regulations clearly state that it is the responsibility of all financial institutions to identify and report suspicious activity concerning how criminals and other bad actors exploit CVCs for money laundering, sanctions evasion, and other illicit financing purposes. These requirements apply to all financial institutions, even if those financial institutions do not directly buy,… Read more

Tracing Ransomware: CipherTrace Helps McAfee Follow NetWalker Funds

On August 3, cybersecurity firm McAfee released new researching showing the activities of NetWalker—ransomware that has collected more than 2,795 bitcoin by operating a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model. Using CipherTrace Inspector, McAfee was able to trace through NetWalker ransomware transactions to follow the coins and uncover intelligence on the revenue-sharing scheme that helped proliferate the malware to make it as profitable as possible. A contributing factor to NetWalker’s success was the utilization… Read more

How Impending Virtual Asset Regulations Impact Banks—Even Those That Don’t Think They Do Crypto

As more mainstream consumer and institutional investors embrace cryptocurrencies, it becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for traditional financial institutions to avoid entanglements with the crypto economy. For example, banks face significant counter-party transaction risks from customers interacting with high-risk crypto exchanges—especially when a bank is unable to identify these transactions as to or from…

Analysis: How Chinese Nationals Linked to North Korea Laundered Hundreds of Millions of Dollars’ Worth of Stolen Cryptocurrency Through Several Banks and Cryptocurrency Exchanges

CipherTrace has previously reported on North Korea using cybercrime to avert economic sanctions and raise hard cash to fund its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) development. For example, in August 2017, we revealed details of a then unreleased UN research report to the Security Council that showed how North Korean state actors had, over a…