U.S. experts uncover large-scale cryptocurrency scheme to circumvent sanctions by Russians

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has discovered a wallet that was used to circumvent sanctions with cryptocurrency. Elliptic security analysts helped the agency uncover the scheme.

Experts found a wallet on the Ethereum blockchain, it belonged to 48-year-old Irishman John Desmond Hanafin. The man currently resides in the UAE and probably helps wealthy Russians withdraw fiat through digital assets.

Based on the blockchain data, it turned out that Hanafin has processed more than $ 5.2 million in Tether stablecoins since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. He helped wealthy citizens of the terrorist state obtain passports of other countries and then supervised money transactions. For this, he received his own percentage of the transactions.

OFAC has now frozen the Irishman’s accounts and initiated an investigation.

In addition to Hanafin, the investment company Huriya Private was involved in the transactions. The firm helped transfer money from Russia to the UAE. Yulia Sergeeva, an employee of the Moscow-based investment firm Aquila Capital Group, which is also under sanctions, was also involved in the transactions.

A significant part of the funds came from Huboi, Binance, OKX, and the bankrupt FTX exchanges. The Estonian company Cryptovenience also helped the criminal scheme by issuing plastic cards for storing and spending cryptocurrencies.

Earlier, we told you that the darknet offers Russians ways to circumvent cryptocurrency sanctions — citizens of the terrorist state are buying up cryptocurrency exchange accounts en masse. In early October, the European Union tightened sanctions against the killer country regarding cryptocurrency transactions in the eurozone. Companies with a European license were banned from opening accounts and crypto wallets for citizens of the occupying state.