The U.S. Treasury Department has approved a second cryptocurrency exchange “to facilitate financial transactions for ransomware participants.” Two ransomware operators were also sanctioned and confiscated $6.1 million in funds.

U.S. Treasury Department sanctions another cryptocurrency exchange

The US Treasury Department announced on Monday that its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned ransomware operators and a cryptocurrency exchange.

The Ministry of Finance stated that the cryptocurrency exchange Chatex and its related support network have been approved to “facilitate financial transactions for ransomware participants.” “Analysis of known transactions on Chatex shows that more than half of the transactions are directly traced to illegal or high-risk activities, such as dark web markets, high-risk transactions, and ransomware.”

Chatex and Over-the-counter transactionsThe Ministry of Finance noted that this is the first cryptocurrency exchange approved by OFAC on September 21.

OFAC also sanctioned Ukrainian Yaroslav Vasinskyi and Russian Yevgeniy Polyanin on Monday, “because they participated in the prolonged Sodinokibi/Revil ransomware incident against the United States.” The Treasury Department added that the two individuals were “part of a cybercriminal group that participated in ransomware activities and received more than $200 million in Bitcoin and Monero in ransom.”

The Treasury Department explained: “All property and property rights of designated targets under the jurisdiction of the United States are blocked, and Americans are generally prohibited from dealing with them. In addition, any entity in which one or more designated persons owns 50% or more of the shares will also be blocked. Blocked.”

Announcement description:

Although most virtual currency activities are legal, virtual currency is still the main mechanism of ransomware payment, and certain unethical virtual currency transactions are an important part of the ransomware ecosystem.

The Department of Justice confiscated US$6.1 million in funds held by FTX Trading

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) independently announced on Monday that it had seized $6.1 million from Polyanin, noting that both Polyanin and Vasinskyi were “accused of deploying Sodinokibi/Revil ransomware to attack American companies and government entities.”

According to the Ministry of Justice, the $6.1 million seized funds can be traced back to the so-called ransom received by Polyanin. The seizure order of the US Department of Justice indicated that these funds were deposited in the “FTX Trading Limited Account” under the name “Evegnii Igorevich Polianin” and/or “Evgeniy Igorevich Polyanin”.

According to blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, both of them received a large amount of cryptocurrency. The company specified the names of all sanctioned addresses:

Polyanin received more than 11.5 million U.S. dollars worth of Bitcoin and more than 2 million U.S. dollars worth of USDT_ETH, and Vasinskyi received more than 900,000 U.S. dollars worth of Bitcoin.

What do you think of the US Treasury Department’s approval of another cryptocurrency exchange and the seizure of 6.1 million US dollars? Let us know in the comments section below.

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