A 37-year-old Florida woman has been indicted in a cryptocurrency money laundering scheme in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Brit Featherston. Sharena Seay, of Jacksonville, FL, was named in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury, charging her with money laundering. She was arraigned in federal court by U.S. Magistrate Judge John D. Love. [Read more]
Christopher J. Waller, one of the seven members of the Fed’s Board of Governors, says in a new speech at a Harvard National Security Journal symposium that he believes developing a CBDC will have little impact on securing the long-term dominance of the US dollar. [Read more]
In August alone, the New York Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) brought its first enforcement action against a DFS-licensed “virtual currency business” – resulting in a $30 million settlement with cryptocurrency investing platform Robinhood Crypto, LLC – and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged 11 people in an alleged crypto pyramid and Ponzi scheme called Forsage. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned and banned currency mixer Tornado Cash, alleging that the platform laundered more than $7 billion in virtual currency since launching in 2019. [Read more]
Research and innovation in fintech in the private banking sector has declined in the last year. The most recent figures show that the number of startups related patent applications in the industry stood at 282 in the three months ending July – down from 733 over the same period in 2021. [Read more]
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado announces Raul Rene Rodriguez-Romero, 33, of Highlands Ranch, has been sentenced to 5 years in federal prison after earlier pleading guilty to distribution of more than 500 grams of methamphetamine and money laundering. [Read more]
Until a few years ago, cryptocurrency was mostly unknown among the Washington crowd. Those policymakers and lawmakers who knew about this emerging technology were few, and because of its lack of tangibility, many thought of it as a plaything for nerds or a tool for bad actors. In short, crypto was taken seriously by only a select few in Washington. [Read more]
The United States, through the Department of Justice and FBI, forfeited approximately $23 million traceable to the corruption and money laundering of former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and his co-conspirators. This money will be returned to the Nigerian people through an agreement between the Governments of the United States and the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Nigeria) signed today in Abuja, Nigeria, by U.S. Ambassador Mary Beth Leonard. This repatriation will bring the total amount forfeited and returned by the Department of Justice in this case to approximately $334.7 million. [Read more]
On August 15, 2022, the federal court in the Central District of California authorized the IRS to serve a John Doe summons on SFOX, a cryptocurrency prime dealer headquartered in California. A John Doe summons is a device (e.g., a subpoena) to gather information from a third party, where the IRS does not know the identity of the person about whom they are seeking the information. This is not the first time the IRS has issued a John Doe summons on a crypto-entity, but this is the first time the IRS has specifically investigated and sought out taxpayers with high-value cryptocurrency transactions. [Read more]
Brookings’s Center on Regulation and Markets and the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy recently hosted “The future of crypto regulation,” keynoted by Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Rostin Behnam. Benham’s keynote was followed by a discussion with experts representing an array of perspectives, including that of regulatory agencies, academia, and industry. Here are five takeaways from the event, which you can watch in its entirety. [Read more]
Crypto exchange Coinbase is expected to report an adjusted loss in the second quarter, while Jack Dorsey-led payments company Block is likely to post a 70% drop in adjusted profit. Wall Street has lowered earnings expectations for once high-flying fintechs Coinbase and Block, as a chill in the cryptocurrency market adds more pain to the companies already grappling with surging costs and rapidly rising rates. [Read more]
