Bestmixer.io, a website that that allows cyber criminals to mix crypto-transactions in order to hide the true source of funds, has been shut down by Dutch authorities, according to Europol which helped to bring down the site.
In a statement on its website, the European police agency Europol said that the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) has seized six servers belong to the crypto tumbler Bestmixer.io, which had a reported turnover of at least $200 million since it was launched in May 2018. Investigations have been ongoing since last June,in what Europol says is the first crackdown by authorities on such a service.
Mixing services are used to conceal the origins of crypto coins – a valuable service for money launderers and criminals seeking to hide the source of their illicit income.
A cryptocurrency blender service makes it possible to anonymize payments by dividing coins into many small quantities on behalf of the customer and sending them back and forth over a network of addresses at random time intervals. The countless transactions in hundreds or thousands of wallets are practically incomprehensible and the tracks are lost in the sand. According to the Europol press release, a significant proportion of the funds that flowed through the site originated in criminal activity.
The Dutch FIOD gathered information on all the interactions on BestMixer.io over the course of the last year, including IP-addresses, transaction details, bitcoin addresses and chat messages. This information will is now being analysed by the FIOD in cooperation with Europol before its finding will be shred with authorities in other countries.
