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On March 15, 2023, the United States Department of Justice, Europol, and the German Federal Criminal Police (the Bundeskriminalamt) cooperated in taking down ChipMixer, a darknet cryptocurrency “mixing” service responsible for laundering more than $3 billion worth of cryptocurrency between 2017 and the present. Among its activities, ChipMixer allegedly engaged in ransomware, the darknet market, fraud, cryptocurrency heists, and other hacking schemes. The operation involved U.S. federal enforcement’s court-authorized seizure of two domains that directed users to the ChipMixer service and one Github account, as well as the German Federal Criminal Police’s seizure of the ChipMixer back-end servers and more than $46 million in cryptocurrency.[1] Europol supported Germany and the U.S. in the law enforcement operations.[2]
[1] U.S. Department of Justice, Justice Department Investigation Leads to Takedown of Darknet Cryptocurrency Mixer that Processed Over $3 Billion of Unlawful Transactions, Press Release 23-289, Mar. 15, 2023.
[2] Europol, One of the darkweb’s largest cryptocurrency launderomats washed out, Press Rel., Mar. 15, 2023.