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Venezuela Crypto Head Added to Most Wanted List by US Customs Authorities

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The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations office based in New York city announced on June 1 that it had included Venezuela crypto head to its most persons list.

According to the ICE, the superintendent to Venezuela’s cryptocurrency,  Joselit de la Trinidad Ramirez Camacho is cited to have  “having deep political, social, and economic ties to multiple alleged narcotics kingpins,” which includes Tareck EI Aissami. The Venezuela crypto head is being charged for allegedly infringing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Kingpin Act, on top of several other policies.

$5 million bounty placed on Venezuela crypto head 

Moreover, the United States authorities have placed a hefty $ million bounty on any information that may lead to the arrest of the Venezuela crypto head. Camocho is the current premier of Venezuela’s cryptocurrency, heading the country’s oil backed Petro digital currency.

Particularly, Venezuela developed its own digital currency backed by the country’s oil reserves back in 2018 to combat the high inflation rate amid international sanctions by the United States. Indeed, the South American nation’s government even went to the extent of forcing its citizens to use the oil-backed cryptocurrency.

US Department of Justice accuses Venezuela President of Narco-terrorism

If arrested, the Venezuela cryptocurrency superintendent will be sent to the United States and charged in the Southern District of New York. Back in May, New York district attorney Geoffrey Berman, accused Ramirez Camacho of participating in a corrupt class of top Venezuelan officials which includes the country’s president Nicolas Maduro.

According to the attorney, the group is operating a; “narco-terrorism partnership” intent on flooding “the United States with cocaine in order to undermine the health and wellbeing of our nation. Additionally, Berman claimed that Maduro and 14 other high-profile government officials such as Padrino Lopez, Diosdado Cabello, Tareck El Aissami; among others run the narco-terrorism operations; and a series of rewards have been announced for information leading to their capture.

Indian Police Arrest Woman On Stealing Bitcoin from Indian Exchange’s Hardware Wallet

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A report from the country’s local media surfaced on the web on March 20, stating that the owner of Indian exchange BitCipher Labs filed a complaint against the woman who stole 64 bitcoins. As a result, the Indian Cyber Crime Police arrested and recovered all the stolen funds.

According to the Times of India, a 26-year old Ayushi Jain was previously working for a country’s own exchange Bitcipher Labs which is situated in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. She had stolen 64 bitcoins which is worth about $430,000 from Bitcipher Labs earlier this year.

Co-founder Ashish Singhal recently discovered that between January 11 and March 11, the large number of bitcoins were transferred through the hardware wallet of the exchange. He then filed a complaint with CID’s cybercrime wing.  Ashish Singhal along with two other co-founders, Vimal Sagar Tiwari and Govind Kumar were holding the wallet and private keys on exchange’s behalf.

Police officer, on the other side, stated that the accused had hacked into their systems and carried out unauthorized transactions, and had also added;

“Since a hardware wallet and passphrase was required for bitcoin transactions, it was suspected that the culprit was someone proficient in using this technology, and who was closely associated with the firm. Police prepared a list of former employees of the company and short-listed Ayushi. When questioned, she admitted having carried out the transactions by acquiring the passphrase written on paper,”

As described by police, Ayushi was one of the early members in their team, Ashish trusted her and shared the key to the almirahs wherein the password for the wallet was kept safe.

Taking advantage of this, Ayushi opened the almirahs when no one was around and took a photograph of the passphrase because she required bitcoins to start her own cryptocurrency exchange company. She purchased a hardware wallet and used the passphrase to convert bitcoins with the assistance of Swap-lab exchange to Monero cryptocurrency, and later had them transferred to her Binance account.

Police also said that the woman returned stoled bitcoins to the original owners and they were able to restore it. As for now, a woman is in police custody after confessing to the crime she attempted. Other reports also noted that the police seized Ayushi’s laptop which contained the history’.

In a nutshell, the crypto community believes that India’s apex court decision of removing the banking bank is gradually becoming the wisest decision country has taken. In fact, soon after the supreme court’s move of quashing the RBI’s crypto ban, the crypto industry in India witnessed the largest investment campaigns, initiated by the country’s leading crypto exchanges – CoinDCX and WazirX with Binance crypto exchange.

US Woman Prisoned For Using Cryptocurrency to Fund a Foreign Terrorist Organization

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The cryptocurrency world is once again about to face another threat to its reputation in what seems to be an unrelenting nightmare. Multiple research shows that bitcoin and crypto assets are used by militant groups to fund their operations.

On 13 March, U.S. District Judge sentenced Zoobia Shahnaz, of Long Island, New York to 13 years in prison for providing financial support to a foreign terrorist group, specifically to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), for more than $150,000.  Shahnaz pleaded guilty in November 2018.

Shahnaz fraudulently raised the money using stolen credit cards to buy about $62,000 in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. She also defrauded several financial institutions in raising money for ISIS, including a loan amounting to about $22,500. Shahnaz then made several wire transfers totaling over $150,000 to ISIS fronts for individuals and organizations in Pakistan, China, and Turkey.

Shahnaz accessed ISIS violent websites and message boards linked to the jihad, and social media and messaging accounts from established ISIS recruiters, facilitators, and financiers.

Shahnaz also wanted to travel to Syria to join ISIS and had been studying online for the group. Court-authorized search warrants conducted at Shahnaz’s Long Island home resulted in the confiscation of extremist and jihad-related material, including a photograph of an explosive suicide vest and a night vision lens.

She was detained on July 31, 2017, at John F. Kennedy International Airport while preparing to board a flight to Turkey, a common entry point for Syria, the Justice Department stated.

Privacy In Crypto

Cryptocurrency has come to terrorism, with a number of extremist groups leveraging the privacy of blockchain technology for fundraising and finances. Data privacy and resistance to censorship provide benefits for unscrupulous dealings. If used wrongly cryptocurrencies may be seen as a way of evading regulatory oversight. As a result, crypto-privacy is under threat.

The government has strengthened regulatory standards for digital currencies to counter digital anonymous crimes, money laundering and so on. A new set of guidelines has been created to address cryptocurrencies and terrorist financing.

The Intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force, which combats money laundering and terrorist funding, noted in an October 19 statement that cryptocurrencies are being used by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and called on governments around the world to create guidelines for their use.

Nevertheless, as cryptocurrency gains more attention, we should expect regulators to come up with better counter-terrorism solutions without limiting our privacy rights.