According to the European Union Agency for Cooperation between Law Enforcement Agencies, better known as Europol, the agency seized the assets of the ChipMixer cryptocurrency mixer on March 15 for alleged money laundering involvement.

Authorities shut down this site’s infrastructure, gaining access to 4 servers and 7 terabytes of data (including users and their processes). Later, the “scrambler” was officially accused of laundering 152,000 BTC (which is more than $45 million in fiat equivalent at the current exchange rate). According to the accusers, a total of about $3.8 billion in “dark” money “passed” through the platform in relation to darknet markets, ransomware, illegal circulation of goods and services, confidential materials and cryptocurrency theft.

Total assets seized include more than 1,900 BTC worth €44.2 million (US$46 million). Decentralized finance analyst ZachXBT previously claimed that hackers of crashed cryptocurrency exchange FTX laundered 360 BTC ($5.9 million) using ChipMixer after a $372 million deficit.

“ChipMixer is an unlicensed cryptocurrency mixer created in mid-2017 that specializes in mixing or confusing traces of virtual currency assets. The law enforcement said that ChipMixer software is for cybercriminals who want to launder illegal proceeds from criminal activities by disguising funds on the blockchain. He said it made it attractive.

Funds invested in ChipMixer were converted into “chips” or small coins of equivalent value, which were then mixed to anonymize the original fund trail.

Ransomware entities such as Zeppelin, SunCrypt, Mamba, Dharma or Lockbit used this service to launder ransoms received. It can be said that this is a success in terms of the power structures of the countries. However, this does not mean that cybercriminals will use other mixers to illegally launder received funds.