The United States government forfeited approximately $34 million worth of cryptocurrency linked to illegal dark web activity.
It is one of the largest cryptocurrency forfeiture actions by the federal government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Federal prosecutors filed a civil forfeiture complaint against a South Florida resident selling illegal items and hacked online account information on some of the largest dark web market places.
According to the complaint, this South Florida resident sold hacked stolen online account information for popular services including HBO, Netflix, Uber and many others. He used a special network of computers distributed around the world known as The Onion Router (TOR) Network to access the dark web. The TOR Network is designed to hide the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of computers, thus a user’s internet traffic is anonymous.
Additionally, the complaint alleged that this South Florida resident committed money laundering. He allegedly used so-called “tumblers” and illegal dark web money transmitter services to launder one cryptocurrency to another. Such scheme is called “chain hopping.”
