Law enforcement officials in the U.S. announced Tuesday they had closed and seized Liberty Resercve, an virtual currency they called a financial hub of the online criminal world.
Four days previosly, its founder, Arthur Budovsky, had been arrested in Spain. The Ukrainian native ran the business from Costa Rica.
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According to an indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Southern New York, authorities allege Liberty Reserve processed 55 million transactions and laundered $6 billion between 2006 and 2013.
While LibertyReserve offered account-to-account transfers, it also created a shopping cart checkout for merchants that were “overwhelmingly criminal in nature,” authorities said. “They included, for example, traffickers of stolen credit card data and personal identity information; peddlers of various types of online Ponzi and get-rich-quick schemes; computer hackers for hire; unregulated gambling enterprises; and underground drug-dealing websites.”
Read the full story on the Krebs on Security blog.
