The FBI has seized nine domains of crypto exchanges that enabled money laundering by cybercriminals. Arrests could follow.

As part of an international law enforcement operation, the FBI has taken down nine crypto exchanges that allowed their users to launder money. From the ongoing analysis of the seized servers, some arrests of cybercriminals who used the affected services could follow soon.

Nine fewer crypto money laundering providers In cooperation with the Virtual Currency Response Team (VCRT) as well as the Ukrainian police and prosecutor's office, the FBI recently seized domains of a total of nine crypto services that enabled cybercriminals to launder money by disguising their transactions.

According to the US Attorney's Office for Michigan, the following websites were taken offline:

24xbtc.com 100btc.pro pridechange.com 101crypta.com uxbtc.com trust-exchange.org bitcoin24.exchange paybtc.pro owl.gold

Each of these sites now displays the FBI's typical seizure banner to visitors. The language changes every few seconds between English and Russian.

Crypto exchanges were particularly popular among ransomware hackers As the justice department highlights in its announcement, a large part of the money laundering carried out on the affected crypto exchanges can be attributed to ransomware attackers. But "other fraudsters and cybercriminals" also used the services offered by these platforms in English and Russian.

Arrests of crypto money laundering users could still follow As BleepingComputer reports, the affected websites even offered live support and instructions to their criminal customers to erase their money trails. They enabled users to convert their stolen crypto loot into "hard-to-trace coins" and thus launder it.

If the ongoing analysis of the server systems allows conclusions to be drawn about cybercriminals who used the offered crypto money laundering, further raids including arrests could be expected in the future.

In the past, so-called crypto mixers repeatedly came under scrutiny by authorities because they allowed malicious actors to cover their tracks through money laundering and use their stolen crypto assets for their own purposes with impunity. For example, in March of last year, the service "ChipMixer" was caught.