Pierluigi Paganini May 26, 2019

European law enforcement seized and shut down Bestmixer.io for reportedly laundering over $200 million in cryptocurrency.

This week the Europol has dealt another blow to cybercrime, the European police along with the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD), and Luxembourg authorities shut down Bestmixer.io, on one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency mixing services.

A mixing service (aka cryptocurrency tumbler) mixes potentially identifiable or ‘tainted’ cryptocurrency funds with others, making hard to trail back to the fund’s original source. Operators behind mixing services maintain a fee from the original funds.

“A mixing service will cut up a sum of Bitcoins into hundreds of smaller transactions and mixes different transactions from other sources for obfuscation and will pump out the input amount, minus a fee, to a certain output address. Mixing Bitcoins that are obtained legally is not a crime but, other than the mathematical exercise, there no real benefit to it.” reads a blog post published by McAfee.

“The legality changes when a mixing service advertises itself as a success method to avoid various anti-money laundering policies via anonymity. This is actively offering a money laundering service.”

Back in 2018, FIOD launched an investigation, with the support of the security firm McAfee, that led in the seizure of six servers in the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

“Today, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD), in close cooperation with Europol and the authorities in Luxembourg, clamped down on one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency mixing service Bestmixer.io.” reads the press release published by the Europol.

Bestmixer.io was launched in May 2018, it offered services for mixing the cryptocurrencies bitcoins, bitcoin cash, and litecoins.

Immediately after the launch, the police began investigating the activity of the mixing service.

The numbers behind the service are impressive, it reached a turnover of at least $200 million (approx. 27,000 bitcoins) in 12 months. Of course, the mixing service ensured the total anonymity of its customers.

“The investigation so far into this case has shown that many of the mixed cryptocurrencies on Bestmixer.io had a criminal origin or destination,” continues the Europol. “In these cases, the mixer was probably used to conceal and launder criminal flows of money.”

The Dutch FIOD is investigating data related to all the interactions on this service in the past year. Investigators obtained IP-addresses, transaction details, bitcoin addresses and chat messages associated with the interactions.

“This information will now be analysed by the FIOD in cooperation with Europol and intelligence packages will be shared with other countries.” concludes the press release.

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Thank you

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Bestmixer .io, cybercrime)

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