European law enforcement agencies have taken down an illegal cryptocurrency mixing service that they say has been used to facilitate cybercrime and money laundering.
The operation to take down the cryptocurrency mixing service ‘Cryptomixer’ was conducted between November 24 and 28 and was announced today by Europol, which assisted Swiss and German law enforcement agencies in the action.
The operation resulted in the seizure of three servers in Switzerland, 12 terabytes of data, €25 million in Bitcoin, and the cryptomixer[.]io domain. Law enforcement placed a seizure banner on the website after the takeover.
“Mixing services such as Cryptomixer offer their clients anonymity and are often used before criminals redirect their laundered assets to cryptocurrency exchanges,” Europol said. “This allows ‘cleaned’ cryptocurrency to be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or for FIAT currency through cash machines or bank accounts.”
Cryptocurrency Mixing ‘A Service to Obfuscate the Origin of Criminal Funds’
Europol called Cryptomixer “A service to obfuscate the origin of criminal funds.”
“Cryptomixer was a hybrid mixing service accessible via both the clear web and the dark web,” the European law enforcement agency stated. “It facilitated the obfuscation of criminal funds for ransomware groups, underground economy forums and dark web markets. Its software blocked the traceability of funds on the blockchain, making it the platform of choice for cybercriminals seeking to launder illegal proceeds from a variety of criminal activities, such as drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, ransomware attacks, and payment card fraud.”
Since its launch in 2016, Europol says that more than €1.3 billion in Bitcoin were mixed through the service.
Deposited funds from users were pooled “for a long and randomised period” before they were redistributed to their destination addresses. “As many digital currencies provide a public ledger of all transactions, mixing services make it difficult to trace specific coins, thus concealing the origin of cryptocurrency,” the agency said.
Action Follows ChipMixer Takedown in 2023
Europol was also involved in the multi-national takedown of the crypto mixing service “ChipMixer” in 2023, an operation that involved four European countries and the U.S.
ChipMixer was considered the largest mixing service of its time, and was suspected to have facilitated the laundering of 152,000 Bitcoins, worth an estimated €2.73 billion at the time.
The joint law enforcement operations in both cases was part of EMPACT, the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats, which aims to address the most important threats posed by organized and international crime affecting the EU.