The use of cryptocurrencies is not limited to the licit trade of market, the reality is that its multiple benefits of anonymity allow the movement of money from one jurisdiction to another, which is a legal problem in the fight against organized crime and money laundering.
The posters of latin america they have been criminal organizations that have been at the forefront of technologySince the era of one of the most famous drug lords Pablo Escobar, the use of drones, submarines and airplanes has made drug distribution a global problem.
They are no longer limited to marketing way, trafficking in persons mainly from the border of Mexico a USA this year has had an exponential growth according to the statistics offered by Reuters, and if this continues, they will be higher than those reported in 2000 by the North American authorities.
Human trafficking has generated more than one million people arrested for the government so far this year, which implicitly generates an issue related to the trafficking process, and is nothing more than the laundering of money obtained by the cartels in the use of these illegal businesses. For it, Panda Security reports on its website that cybercriminals have found various forms of money laundering, and here we list only three that have been linked to the illicit activities of criminal gangs.
The use of cryptocurrencies with physical wallets
With the intention of attracting less attention, the cartels have stopped using the shelter of large amounts of money to carry out slower laundering processes through real or fictitious companies, or deposits programmed so that they are not detected by the authorities .
Instead, the cartels have been acquiring cryptocurrencies that they protect in physical devices the size of a pendrive for example, and that facilitates the transport of money from one place to another, that although it can be done remotely, the truth is that with the use of the purses It ensures that the funds are used by the right people and prevents the funds they are trying to launder from being stolen from them.
They use mining equipment
The cartels, in addition to physical purses, now use mining that they have acquired in legal markets or not, but that ultimately the product of that process is legal, and therefore the investment they have made to start that process, are profitable in a short time in a safe way.
In countries like Mexico, there is a law that obliges exchange houses duly registered in that country to inform the authorities for any transaction that exceeds $ 2,800, although Mexican police sources report that they do not have the resources and the skills to do so. advance much more with the information that is received.
In a study published by Intsights reveals that in Latin America criminal gangs are organized and at the forefront of the use of technology. The use of the deep internet and other parallel underground markets offer rental services for hackers, physical spaces and even mining equipment.
Indeed, in the book of “Cybercrime and Computer Crimes”Compiled by Ricardo Prada and José Errecaborde in October 2018, indicates that the FBI has created a list of technology specialists who provide their services to organized criminal gangs, namely: programmers, data distributors, expert technicians for the maintenance of the hardware, hackers, hosting providers, muleteers (who carry out transfers between accounts), launderers and vendors who are in charge of controlling the accounts and the names of the victims to market the accounts.
Crypto, gambling and money laundering
Like the previous cases, gangs or cartels have dabbled in the use of cryptocurrency games to launder ill-gotten money. Panda Security in your report. It indicates that it has been detected how criminals have infiltrated the video game industry, whether with cryptocurrencies or not, in fact games like Fortnite are one of those used by gangs to be able to “launder” the money they obtain from the illegal business.
Elliptic He already commented on it in his September 2019 report, where he explains how criminals use cryptocurrencies to launder money from illicit activities. More specifically, it points out how online gambling platforms and games through sites that accept bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is a common way to carry out a money laundering scheme. To this he adds the forced question of whether the schemes are extended to ‘cryptogames’ platforms, games based on blockchain technology.
Like any cryptocurrency, the funds obtained by a game are exchangeable to the currency that you want to use, so that change from the cryptocurrency to the currency you want is a way that is being used to prevent agencies such as the give or the FBI seize large sums of money.
In the same Intsights report, it indicates that: “In October 2019, an official from the Panamanian payment processing company Crypto Capital was arrested as part of a Polish investigation for allegedly laundering the proceeds of drug sales on behalf of an international criminal group. Ivan Manual Molina Lee was arrested in Greece and extradited to Poland. The Polish Ministry of Justice seized 350 million dollars from a Polish bank, claiming that the funds directly linked to the money laundering that Molina Lee carried out for the Colombian drug cartels using cryptocurrencies. “
The latest DEA report indicates that organized crime generates billions of dollars annually through the sale of illegal drugs in the United States. They have obtained evidence that the cartels have been using cryptocurrencies as money laundering methods and thus being slightly less detectable.
Evidence such as arrests to Ignacio Santoyo who was arrested in Mexico after being linked to a prostitution ring that exploited more than two thousand women in Latin America and received payments through Bitcoin.
In response to these cybercrimes, offices such as the FBI have already created groups of specialists dedicated to tracking cryptographic money that is obtained through extortion or money laundering when it comes to cartels or organized gangs.. In addition, they urge companies to improve their cybersecurity.
Like money Fiat, cryptocurrencies are constantly being used for illicit purposes, but this does not mean that this type of actions by criminal groups should in any way distort the real sense of the use of cryptocurrencies.
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