FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is seeking to have up to 10 criminal charges against him dismissed in court, arguing that there has been a failure to state an offense. SBF's legal team has pushed to dismiss everything apart from three counts of conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The police have blocked the infrastructure of the network, which was located on servers in the United States, European countries, and Ukraine, and seized the domain names.

The Ukrainian authorities, in collaboration with the US government, have reportedly shut down nine cryptocurrency exchanges that were operating illegally. The exchanges were accused of facilitating money laundering and illegal activities and were allegedly being used by criminals to launder the proceeds of their crimes. The Ukrainian authorities have been cracking down on illegal cryptocurrency activities in recent years, with the aim of promoting a safe and secure environment for cryptocurrency users in the country. The shut down of these exchanges is seen as a positive step towards achieving this goal.

A former product manager at OpenSea, the world's largest marketplace for NFTs, has been convicted of fraud and money laundering by a court for insider trading of non-fungible tokens. Nathaniel Chastain was found to have used inside knowledge of which digital arts would be issued on the front page for trading to buy NFTs before featuring them on the website and then selling them for a profit. The conviction marks the first-ever trial involving insider trading of NFTs, and legal experts say it holds broader implications for digital assets that are hard to fit into existing laws. Chastain's lawyers argued that OpenSea did not treat details and knowledge related to digital assets to be featured on the homepage as confidential information when he worked there.

A North Korean bank official, Sim Hyon Sop, has been charged with crypto laundering conspiracies and illegal wage laundering through a group of North Korean IT workers. The workers assumed fake identities and were paid in digital assets, which were then used to launder earnings and redirect them to North Korea. The sanctioned state used these funds to "generate revenue for North Korea's ballistic missile and WMD programs." The charges present a broader pattern of North Korean users leveraging VPNs and virtual digital assets to redirect revenues to North Korea. The FBI continues to investigate the case, and the money laundering charges are punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison. However, the North Korean bank official and others are unlikely to face trial since they were largely based in China or Hong Kong when the crime occurred.

In this blog, we’ll examine the details of these charges and sanctions, and the new information they reveal about North Korea’s cryptocurrency money laundering processes.

Former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain is facing two counts of wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly using his insider knowledge to secretly buy 45 NFTs shortly before their listing and selling them with a profit immediately afterward. The trial, which is expected to last several weeks, could have a major influence on the legal classification of NFTs. If the case sticks, there is precedent that insider trading theory can be applied to any asset class, warned former SEC employee Philip Moustakis. Another recent court case involving crypto exchange Coinbase supported a motion to dismiss the insider trading case against the brother of the platform’s former product manager, arguing that the SEC had no jurisdiction to file a lawsuit given the tokens in question do not pass the Howey test.

The Indian enforcement directorate has frozen over $11.1 million in an ongoing investigation into money laundering using the cryptocurrency HPZ token. The funds were seized during searches conducted at three banks and payment gateway providers across the country that served entities involved in money laundering. The investigation found that two companies collected funds from investors under the guise of investment in the app-based HPZ token. Bhupesh Arora controlled one of these companies and his associates, according to authorities. Arora and his co-conspirators were using the firm and several other entities to defraud investors by operating various unregistered websites and applications for gaming and loans. The accused individuals promised investors huge returns if they invested in HPZ tokens, generated through investment in mining machines for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In October 2021, the lawsuit was filed, and in February, the authorities seized $3.6 million from bank accounts associated with companies implicated in the case. The total assets frozen in the case now amount to $21.7 million.

Special envoys from the US, Japan, and South Korea have expressed concerns about North Korea's growing nuclear program and the role of its overseas workers, including IT specialists, in financing its weapons programs through the theft and laundering of funds, including cryptocurrencies. North Korea-linked hackers stole a record $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency last year alone, according to estimates from Chainalysis. Despite the UN Security Council Resolution 2397 mandating the repatriation of overseas North Korean workers, many continue to work abroad. North Korean hackers have been alleged to use cryptocurrencies to generate revenue for the country, with high-profile attacks attributed to North Korean hackers including the 2018 theft of $530 million worth of cryptocurrency from the Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck. The Lazarus Group, a hacking group believed to be sponsored by the North Korean government, is allegedly responsible for carrying out a number of high-profile cyber attacks against various targets, including banks, governments, and crypto exchanges.

A bitter dispute between Paxful's co-founders Artur Schaback and Mohamad (Ray) Youssef in Delaware's courts may have been the real reason behind the Bitcoin marketplace's sudden closure on April 4.