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Cryptocurrency accounts seized in $2.3M money laundering scheme | Chattanooga Times Free Press

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Cryptocurrency accounts seized in .3M money laundering scheme | Chattanooga Times Free Press

An Athens, Tennessee, woman has been implicated in a federal forfeiture warrant as a “money mule” who helped bilk a Minnesota-based nonprofit out of at least $2.3 million in a complex online romantic money laundering scheme.

According to a complaint filed April 2 in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga, the federal government was granted a warrant for the seizure of three cryptocurrency accounts opened in the name of Athens resident Linda Winder. Winder is not facing any charges in the case.

The complaint was in connection with an alleged fraud scheme involving the laundering of funds stolen from a nonprofit organization victimized in a business email compromise.

The alleged crime resulted in a loss of at least $2.3 million. The victim in the case is an unnamed nonprofit in Minnesota providing transportation and home-based services for people with disabilities across the state.

(READ MORE: Business Bulletin: How romance scams work and what to watch out for)

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The scheme surfaced in October 2023 when a family member of Winder’s reported finding an envelope in her home containing a series of deposit slips from cryptocurrency kiosks totaling $162,730 worth of Bitcoin, FBI agent Sean Reid said in a federal affidavit filed April 2. Since Winder’s husband died in 2017, the family member told authorities, many people contacted her online, identifying themselves as single men.

In 2019, Winder had begun an online relationship with a person going by the name of “Joe Milano,” the affidavit said. The family member reported Winder had wired money to Milano as part of a romance scam and was concerned she was also laundering money.

Winder participated as a “money mule,” Reid said in the affidavit. A money mule is someone who transfers illegally acquired money on behalf of or at the direction of someone else. Money mules are often recruited through an online romance or an online job scheme to move money electronically through bank accounts. The mules are often asked to use an established bank account or open a new bank account to receive money from someone they have never met in person.

“In this instance, the money mule acting on behalf of a person or persons unknown received multiple deposits of tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of several months,” Reid said in the affidavit. “She then laundered by transferring to a Coinbase account, one of many financial accounts used in the laundering of these stolen funds and converting to cryptocurrency.

“The FBI believes that over the course of Winder’s relationship with Milano, between 2021 and 2023, Winder participated in the laundering of no less than $2.3 million,” Reid said.

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A message seeking comment left for Winder on a phone listed in her name was not returned.

Rachelle Barnes, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chattanooga, did not respond to questions asked by phone and email seeking details about the case.

In a series of interviews with the FBI, Winder and her family described a scheme in which Milano gradually coaxed Winder to send him money, initially from her own funds, in increasing amounts, before eventually directing Winder to open at least one account at a cryptocurrency exchange, Reid said.

Winder took out several personal loans totaling $150,000 and withdrew about $33,000 of her own money and sent it to Milano. Winder acknowledged she had transacted hundreds of thousands of dollars through her Wells Fargo Bank account on Milano’s behalf, authorities said.

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The FBI said Winder used accounts at several financial institutions to transfer money defrauded from other parties, including unknown third parties, Reid’s affidavit said. Winder then forwarded the money, at Milano’s behest, to her cryptocurrency account or through cryptocurrency kiosks to a cryptocurrency exchange. Some money was sent to other financial institutions or people.

Contact Southeast Tennessee reporter Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569.

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Crypto

Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

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Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

When Strategy (MSTR 0.69%) sold a modest amount of Bitcoin earlier this year, it was a noteworthy development given that the company’s business has centered around buying up as much of the cryptocurrency as it can, and vowing to never sell. And it often boasts of being the largest corporate holder of the digital currency.

The company brushed off the sale of 32 Bitcoins, with management saying it simply wanted to “inoculate the market.” Well, now it appears that Strategy is doing much more than just that, and there could be more significant cryptocurrency sales in the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strategy unveils a Bitcoin monetization program

On June 29, Strategy released a framework going forward that it says will “enhance liquidity, preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure, and support long-term value creation for shareholders.” Among the notable components is its Bitcoin monetization program.

Within that program, the company says it may sell some of its cryptocurrency holdings for multiple reasons, including to fund a USD reserve, fund dividends or interest expense, or to fund repurchases of digital credit securities or common stock.

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While the company says it remains committed to Bitcoin for the long term and it’s the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it’s a significant change of course for Strategy, which was previously heavily against ever selling the digital asset.

Strategy Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.69%) $-0.69

Current Price

$100.08

The stock is as risky and volatile as ever

Whether or not Strategy buys or sells Bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that this is a highly risky and speculative stock to own. While crypto fans may be disappointed in the company’s change in strategy, selling Bitcoin will likely not be enough to make the business any better or worse as an investment.

In just the past 12 months, the stock has plummeted a whopping 75% as volatility in digital assets has drastically weighed on its earnings, with the company incurring $12.8 billion in losses over the trailing 12 months, on revenue of $490 million.

That’s not likely to change significantly, even if Strategy offloads some of its crypto holdings, because with such a large exposure to Bitcoin, how the cryptocurrency performs will inevitably impact the company’s bottom line in a big way. This year, the leading cryptocurrency is down 28% as investor excitement around it has largely cooled off, which has proven disastrous for Strategy’s stock as well. And at this stage, there’s little reason to anticipate a recovery anytime soon.

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Key Takeaways

Your WiFi can feel rock-solid at midnight and oddly sluggish by breakfast, even when you have not touched a single setting. The culprit is often outside your walls: a crowded slice of public radio spectrum where your router has to negotiate space with every nearby network, plus a grab bag of household gadgets that leak interference. Add peak-hours demand and the signal-blocking quirks of building materials and weather, and “slow internet” starts to look less like a billing issue and more like an invisible traffic problem you are forced to share.

When WiFi slows down without warning

One day your home WiFi feels snappy, the next it drags, even though your router hasn’t moved and your internet plan hasn’t changed. That swing is real, and it’s usually not your imagination or a “bad day” from your ISP. WiFi lives on shared airwaves, and those airwaves get crowded, noisy, and sometimes just plain finicky.

Think of your connection as a conversation in a busy room. Your laptop and router may be talking just fine, but the room itself can fill up fast with other chatter. What looks like a mystery slowdown is often the result of invisible competition and interference that changes hour by hour.

The battle of competing networks

Most homes still rely heavily on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands, which are unlicensed spectrum in the US. That “free for everyone” reality is convenient, but it also means your network shares space with your neighbors, their smart TVs, their work laptops, and every nearby router doing the same thing.

Congestion has a rhythm. During common work-from-home and school-from-home windows, especially 8-10 AM, and again in the evening 6-10 PM, more devices are streaming, video calling, syncing, and downloading updates. Even if you pay for fast broadband, your WiFi link can become the bottleneck when the local radio environment gets packed.

Interference inside your home

Your own house can sabotage you. A microwave is the classic culprit because it can leak noise near 2.4 GHz, exactly where many WiFi networks still operate. Older cordless phones, some baby monitors, and even dense clusters of Bluetooth gadgets can add more clutter, especially in smaller apartments where everything sits close together.

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Then there’s physics. Concrete, metal, and even water (think aquariums or thick pipes in walls) absorb and scatter radio signals. A router shoved behind a TV, tucked into a cabinet, or stuck in a far corner forces your devices to “hear” through more obstacles, lowering speeds and making dropouts more likely.

Weather, channels, and what you can do tonight

Environmental changes can matter too. Higher humidity and rain can slightly increase signal loss, and shifting temperatures can change how radio waves propagate around a neighborhood. You might never notice on its own, but paired with congestion it can tip a marginal connection into a frustrating one.

The 2.4 GHz band is also channel-limited. In the US there are 11 channels, but only 1, 6, and 11 don’t overlap. Many routers default to “auto channel,” so nearby networks can hop around trying to escape interference, sometimes creating instability. Practical fixes: prefer 5 GHz (or 6 GHz if you have WiFi 6E/7 gear), place the router centrally and higher up, and use a WiFi analyzer app to pick a less crowded channel instead of leaving it on auto.

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Cryptocurrency exchanges believed to be financing Russia’s war in Ukraine have been sanctioned by the U.K. government in the first attempt to prevent evasion via “dark networks.” The move indicates a new focus on digital sanctions evasion, and compliance teams should expect these rules to develop further, potentially in the EU and other jurisdictions.


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Ruth Prickett graduated from Cambridge University with a BA hons in History and has specialized in business and finance journalism for the past 20 years. She was editor of Financial Management, the magazine…
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