The U.S. Secret Service, which works with a coalition of international law enforcement agencies, has revoked and occupied the Garantex website, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange accused of being associated with DarkNet markets and ransomware hackers.
The official Garantex website was replaced Thursday, saying the exchange’s domain name had been seized by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in an arrest warrant for Eastern Virginia.
This is the latest action taken by the Western government against the Moscow Exchange.
Last month, the EU also approved Garantex AS explain It is “closely related to the European Union-approved Russian banks”. This is part of a sanction against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In 2022, Garantex approved by the U.S. Treasury Departmentmore than $100 million in transactions claimed to be “associated with illegal actors and the Darknet market”, including the infamous Russian ransomware Gang Conti and Darknet Market Hydra.
TechCrunch saw the notice that the operation was coordinated with the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, Europol, the European Police, the Dutch National Police, the German Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt or BKA), the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, Finnish National National Pressitian National Propect and Estonian National Colleges.
TechCrunch contacted all of these organizations for comment. At the time of writing, only the FBI responded, refusing to comment.
TechCrunch also contacts Garantex by seizing the official email address listed on the website listed previously and the company’s telegram account. Garantex did not respond to these messages.
TechCrunch verifies website epilepsy notifications by analyzing Garantex’s internet domain records. As of Thursday, Garantex’s web domain is now pointing to servers known to be controlled by the Secret Service. Several other websites executed by the Secret Service in recent years will also host the same server.
After the seizure, Garantex did not mention law enforcement actions on its official telegram channel. On Thursday morning, Garantex Announce The announcement’s machine translation said it is “suspend all services, including cryptocurrency withdrawals.”
The decision comes after Stablecoin issuer Tether freezes $28 million worth of cryptocurrency on Garantex.
“We have bad news,” Garantex wrote. “We are fighting and will not give up! Please pay attention to all [Tether] Currently, Russia’s wallet is under threat. ”
