Germany and U.S. Seize Over $46M Crypto Tied to ChipMixer Investigation: Europol

Authorities from Germany and the U.S. have seized up to 44 million euros ($46.3 million) from ChipMixer, a noted cryptocurrency mixer, according to the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol).

The respective authorities took down the platform's infrastructure, seizing four servers, 7 terabytes of data and 1909.4 bitcoins (BTC) ($47.7 million), Europol said on Wednesday.

The seizure was also supported by Belgium, Poland and Switzerland.

ChipMixer allowed its clients to hide the trails of their criminal exploits, such as drug or weapon trafficking, ransomware attacks and payments fraud, according to Europol.

The platform is believed to have enabled the laundering of 152,000 BTC – around $3.8 billion at current prices – a large share of which was connected to ransomware groups, illicit goods trafficking and child sexual exploitation.

Mixing services gained increased prominence in August 2022 when Ethereum-based mixer Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) for facilitating North Korea’s money-laundering operations. Shortly after, Tornado Cash’s web developer Alexey Pertsev was arrested.

Read more: Tornado Cash Fork, Privacy Pools, Deployed on Optimism Testnet

UPDATE (March 15, 14:15 UTC): Adds detail on scale of ChipMixer's previous activity and paragraph on Tornado Cash.