Bringing closure to the long-awaited judgment associated to the cash laundering actions over the BitMEX crypto alternate, one of many 4 federal district courthouses in New York reportedly sentenced two-year probation and 6 months of house detention to founder and ex-CEO Arthur Hayes.
Arthur Hayes, together with the opposite BitMEX co-founders — Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed — and the corporate’s first non-employee Gregory Dwyer, pleaded responsible to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) violations on Feb 24, admitting to “willfully failing to establish, implement and maintain an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program at BitMEX.”
Pleading responsible to supporting cash laundering is a punishable offense, usually carrying a most penalty of 5 years jail time. However, each Hayes and Delo made their responsible pleas forward of the March trial date and had agreed to pay $10 million in felony fines every.
On April 7, Cointelegraph reported that Hayes voluntarily surrendered to US authorities in Hawaii six months after federal prosecutors first levied prices, to which his legal professionals acknowledged:
“Mr. Hayes voluntarily appeared in court and looks forward to fighting these unwarranted charges.”
According to the indictment, public courtroom filings, and statements made in courtroom, Hayes was launched after posting a $10-million bail bond pending future proceedings in New York. However, prosecutors from the Office’s Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit discovered the entrepreneurs to be responsible of not implementing AML safeguards, together with not fulfilling know-your-customer (KYC) obligations.
Despite the approaching chance of serving jail time, owning up to the allegations resulted in Hayes being sentenced to a house confinement sentence that requires him to spend the primary six months of his sentence from house. In addition, he additionally agreed to pay a nice of $10 million.
Related: Blockchain and crypto generally is a boon for monitoring monetary crimes
Busting the parable associated to the convenience of laundering cash utilizing crypto, a brand new evaluation highlights the potential of blockchain expertise and crypto to monitor down monetary crimes.
While quite a few initiatives inside the crypto ecosystem have been victims of focused assaults, dangerous actors proceed to battle when it comes to cashing out the stolen funds.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Dmytro Volkov, chief expertise officer at crypto alternate CEX.IO, mentioned that the notion of crypto being primarily utilized by criminals is outdated, including:
“In the case of Bitcoin (BTC), whose blockchain ledger is publicly available, a serious exchange with a competent analytics team can easily monitor and thwart hackers and launderers before the damage is done.”
