Why do you not included the link? This is what I saw online about the crime:

https://news.yahoo.com/israel-arrests-three-international-money-111311674.html

Bitcoin was not yet mentioned, only cryptocurrencies were mentioned three times (cryptocurrencies were mentioned two times and digital currencies was mentioned once:




Do not forget DeFi has the highest crime rate, not bitcoin, and we do not know how the crime was committed and the cryptocurrencies that were used.

This makes me wonder if crypto is easier to track than using fiat to move the funds around.

If they withdrew cash and transported it via car from France to Israel, they'd only really risk being found at the initial withdraw step (and if they can hide their identity well for that bit, they probably wouldn't be recognised the rest of the way) - the money could then be laundered by more tried and tested measures to ensure it looks like they acquired it a legit way.

   You only need to take a look at the graph of money loundered via cryptocurrency per year to see that there are lots of money loundering going on in the crypto space every year.





 Blockchain Decentralization is making it more possible for those scammers to successful lounder money without being caught.

With or without btc their will always be a money theft, it's called international money laundering crime not because it was laundered through btc but it was because the money was stolen from a country and transferred to the order country.

We should not always picked the negative things which hackers and thief's use a development like btc for, but we should as well consider the positive things which it has helped us achieved.
Btc saved lots from Financial crisis, give them quick access to money and make things more easier than it has ever been.

We should also look at the numbers on how big fiat is, and I would say that it is the go to when criminals wanted to launder money and not crypto.

And we've heard criminals getting caught by the police because obviously everything in on the public blockchain. So I would say that this criminals are dumb to uses bitcoin or crypto because sooner or later they will be track and get caught.

So is every other money-laundering case that used fiat. Pretty sure we should be blaming the people involved that did the crime instead of anything else.

https://beincrypto.com/fiat-still-accounts-for-the-majority-of-financial-crimes-us-treasury-department-report/
To quote

Not surprising! We do always see that it is really been given up some emphasis whenever Bitcoin or crypto would really get involved with these money laundering things or issues without even tending to look back that

fiat money had been used since from the beginning of time and it is really just ends up on bitcoin or crypto would really took the blame whenever someone get caught on using it.It is true that trying out to do illegal

on a public ledger would be always a good idea and this is one of the example of this one which it do really ends up on a disaster.

Interesting. In this case they didn't use any mixer but rather moved the money to cryptocurrencies and exchanged them several times. No further details are given but it would be interesting to know if one of the coins used was Monero. I also don't see if they used a DEX or a CEX, it would be interesting to know.


It is a fantasy what you have written.

How could they withdraw millions from a French bank?

There is currently a €1k cash payment limit in France, so to withdraw millions from a bank they would have to have filled out a bunch of AML paperwork, and I don't think that would be done by someone who is trying to launder money.

In the unlikely event that they could have taken out those millions in bank bills, driving from France to Israel, they probably wouldn't have been stopped in EU territory, but if they had, they would have had a lot of explaining to do, otherwise they could have been preventively seized the money.

But at the EU border, they would have had to declare the money, otherwise it could have been seized, and, again, I don't think that declaring the money would be done by someone who is trying to launder it:

EU Cash Controls

"As part of the EU’s efforts to tackle money laundering and the financing of terrorism, all travellers entering or leaving EU territory are already obliged to complete a cash declaration when carrying EUR 10 000 or more (or equivalent in other currencies, bonds, shares or travellers’ cheques). Customs authorities are empowered to check persons, their luggage and their means of transport. They are also empowered to detain undeclared cash."

I imagine you don't live in the EU or don't know how things are there.

This is the problem with some of these people, as soon as they see the word bitcoin, they rush to conclude it's all bitcoins fault whereas, in reality, bitcoin is only a victim too with this kind of crime. They are the same with the mainstream media that are hostile when it comes to cryptocurrency, they will put in the headline some bad title about bitcoins and when you read the full news bitcoin has really nothing to do with it.