German Authorities Seized ChipMixer
The seizure banner on ChipMixer's website
According to a press release by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the investigators seized ChipMixer's four servers on March 15, 2023. In addition to shutting down the mixer, the investigators sized approximately 1909.4 bitcoins worth over $46 million. The investigators also gained access to 7 terabytes of data.
Information acquired in the course of the operation allegedly revealed that since its inception in mid-2017, ChipMixer has been used to launder approximately 154,000 bitcoin worth approximately $3.8 billion.
The main sources of the bitcoin sent to the mixer are addresses associated with dark web marketplaces, fraudsters, and ransomware groups.
Information acquired from the takedown of Hydra Market in April 2022 allegedly revealed that of the $200 million in bitcoin deposited to ChipMixer from dark web marketplaces, $60 million was sent from addresses associated with Hydra.
The investigators also believe the mixer was used to launder stolen funds worth over $700 million in bitcoin. The funds include those stolen from FTX, Axie Infinitys Ronin Bridge and Harmonys Horizon Bridge.
Bitcoin worth approximately $17 million was linked to ransomware actors, such as Sodinokibi, Mamba, and Suncrypt. While over $35 million in bitcoin was linked to fraud shops.
The US Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, charged suspected ChipMixer's operator, Minh Qu?c Nguy?n, 49, of Vietnam, with money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and identity theft. Nguy?n faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison if convicted.
ChipMixer's takedown follows the sanctioning of the Ethereum mixing service, [url=]Tornado Cash[/url] by the US Treasury in 2022. And the arrest of its developer, Alexey Pertsev, by Dutch authorities.
Comments (25)
Beep2023-03-1653abac76
wow big news! it's too bad. This was the best mixer. Truly. Nothing else does mixing in this way. > The investigators also gained access to 7 terabytes of data. What data? I wonder if they kept old mixing flow data. eep!
null2023-03-1788047b0e
What moron uses a mixer? Just convert your crypto to xmr then back! Go watch the Defcon 30 video with the guy talking about darknet vendor opsec on youbube
Meep2023-03-16995f0d47
Here is the chatter on the fallout from daily users of ChipMixer on the only forum I know where ChipMixer admin had an active thread. It starts here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1935098.msg61916953#msg61916953
meepmeep2023-03-16a26259e1
today (( 2023 mar 16 )) i checked an old private key i got from chipmixer more than a year ago that still had some coin in it. The coins were sent out of that address 2023 Mar 15! This tells us that chipmixer kept all data, the feds have it, and they took all the coins remaining in those old private keys that chipmixer supposedly deleted with session info! That is very, very bad news!
MeepMeep2023-03-168f344335
from thread: "Turns out chipmixer claims were a scam. Even my chips which I had in chipmixer service for which they claimed to "delete private" keys after 7 days or whatever, were seized/transfered. and these transactions took place good 3 months ago. You can assume that they stored history on everything including input and outputs and this data is now in LE hands. ... DOJ/FBI claims the operator of the website was identified due to OPSEC mistake where he sent funds to one of Paypal accounts associated with CM from his real identified Paypal account. Check page 32 of indictment. They digged very deep and even successfully probed ProtonMail for info... They were also able to identify server serving TOR website hosted in Hetzner, it is not disclosed how they managed to find out the real IP address of .onion website. After finding the server they probed the PayPal account which funded the hosting service, checked the logs and found out chipmixer operator identity..."
Bad day2023-03-16e458a313
Cause you had a bad day You're taking one down You sing a sad song just to turn it around You say you don't know You tell me, "don't lie" You work at a smile, and you go for a ride You had a bad day The camera don't lie You're coming back down, and you really don't mind You had a bad day You had a bad day
sunny2023-03-17d89fcdeb
How he was caught is very interesting, wonder how they would've done it had he not made that "mistake"
Information > $2023-03-1700cf30e9
So we may deduce that BTC mixers are effective enough for western governments to have the desire to invest the funds necessary (millions of dollars) to hunt them down and that big actors on the internet feel comfortable in their obfuscation abilities to use them. Switching from BTC to Monero and then back into BTC is a pain!
Wondering2023-03-18708b275e
Forgive my ignorance but why dont people just swap to monero and after that swap to any coin of their choice?
SoWonderful2023-03-209154bb5f
one example, you don't want analysis firms to be able to tell which exchange you used, so you send your btc to a mixer (chipmixer mixed well and had no mandatory fees), THEN you change it into monero at your preferred swap service. another example, you don't want to pay 3% to 4% fees to swap into monero, because it's just $600 or something small, meaning the fees will end up way too high (big loss), so you just mix it through chipmixer (no fees beyond the btc miner fees)
Disc0ntinue2023-03-22ff948651
Seems we may have sam bent in here as well aka newb. :) Which doesn't surprise me one bit. Most things he is involved with has to do with LE operations and he supports them. Disc0ntinue
Trump1592023-04-061d3ae3b7
why anyone would use centrazlied mixer then you have tornado cash? that's cryptographycally prooved to be secure and decentrazlied. Even after santion you can run front-end locally
screenhabit2023-04-226463cc62
t2d will be flooded with legit benzo bars at zero cost -- not even shipping. I realize this is unrelated; BUT IT IS HAPPENING IN SEVERAL DAYS. Why is a person or group doing this? ....just assume for a moment what i am saying is accurate -- what is the most likely motivation?
101277298722023-03-16b9ec2140
the onion link is still online! but the clearnet shows seizure notice