According to their own statements, German investigators have shut down the world’s largest money laundering service on the dark web. They confiscated the Germany-based servers of the “ChipMixer” platform and Bitcoins worth around 44 million euros, as the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Criminal Police Office announced on Wednesday. The operators of the service are said to have operated commercial money laundering and a criminal trading platform on the Internet.
“ChipMixer” was a service that had been in existence since 2017, which accepted the digital currency Bitcoin from criminal origin in order to pay it out again from concealment processes, the so-called “mixing”. The deposited crypto assets were therefore divided into uniform small amounts called “chips”. These were then mixed up to hide the origin of the money. “ChipMixer” promised users complete anonymity.
It is estimated that bitcoins worth 2.8 billion euros were laundered via the platform. This made it the world’s top-selling cryptomixer on the Darknet. Much of it originated from darknet marketplaces, fraudulently obtained crypto assets and other criminal acts. The main suspect was put out by the US authorities for manhunt.
