Crypto
Cryptocurrency backed by Farage donor is used for Russian war effort, investigators say
A cryptocurrency backed by one of Nigel Farage’s biggest donors has been used to help Russia fight its war against Ukraine, British investigators say.
The National Crime Agency has spent four years trying to crack a multibillion-dollar scheme that exchanges cash from drug and gun sales in the UK for crypto, digital tokens that are designed to hide their users’ identities.
The scheme has enabled “sanctions evasions and the highest levels of organised crime, including providing money-laundering services to the Russian state”, the agency says.
Of the $24m (£18.3m) in crypto that the NCA and its counterparts abroad have so far been able to seize, the “vast majority” was issued by Tether.
A private company headquartered in El Salvador, Tether has grown so popular that it declared profits of $13bn for 2024, one-and-a-half times those of McDonald’s. Tether’s shares are reportedly owned by a small group, among them Christopher Harborne, one of the UK’s biggest political donors. Harborne took a 12% stake around 2016, court papers say, although it is unclear what share of Tether’s profits he has received.
In 2019-20, as the UK was leaving the EU, Harborne gave £10m to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, since renamed Reform UK. In January, Farage accepted another £28,000 from Harborne to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration as president – the month after the US placed sanctions on the Russian bosses of the laundering networks and publicly warned they were using Tether.
Reform UK, the first British political party to accept donations in crypto, did not respond to a request for comment. Harborne’s lawyers said that accusing an investor in Tether of complicity in crimes perpetrated by users of its tokens would be “akin to claiming the US Treasury is an accomplice in money laundering because it prints the US dollar”.
While there is no suggestion that Harborne himself is implicated in the money-laundering scheme, some of his fortune appears to have come from a company whose cryptocurrency is in high demand from illicit networks such as the Russian ones unearthed by the NCA’s Operation Destabilise.
Unlike volatile cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Tether’s tokens are stablecoins, whose value is pegged to the dollar, making them easier to exchange for real currencies. Buyers of newly minted Tether stablecoins – called USDT – pay one dollar for each. Tether holds this cash to maintain the stablecoin’s peg, and makes money from the interest or investment return on it. About 184bn USDT are in circulation.
A Tether representative said the company “unequivocally condemns the illegal use of stablecoins and is fully committed to combating illicit activity”.
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“Tether tokens are often acquired and circulated through secondary markets and peer-to-peer platforms. These flows are not controlled by Tether but we remain vigilant and ready to act when law enforcement identifies illicit activity,” the spokesperson added.
But crypto experts say all demand – including illicit demand – benefits the company by driving up the cash reserves from which Tether makes its billions in profit.
Harborne, a former McKinsey consultant, is not an executive at Tether. He also has interests in aviation fuel, military contractors and a wellness centre in Thailand, where he lives, going by British and Thai names. He describes himself as an “intensely private person”.
As well as helping Farage and his parties, Harborne has given money to the Conservatives and donated £1m to Boris Johnson when he left Downing Street in 2022. The Guardian revealed that after the donation Harborne accompanied Johnson on a visit to Ukraine. Neither has said why.
Johnson did not respond to a request for comment. A Tory spokesperson said: “All donations to the Conservative party are accepted in good faith and only after thorough due diligence to ensure they come from permissible sources. We take our legal and compliance responsibilities extremely seriously.”
NCA investigators say cryptocurrency has “turbocharged” money laundering, with the Russian laundering scheme switching to Tether shortly before 2020.
Sal Melki, the NCA’s deputy director of economic crime, said: “A line can be drawn from this money-laundering scheme to support for companies involved in the Russian military-industrial base.”
The NCA launched Operation Destabilise in 2021 when it rumbled a ransomware gang whose proceeds were being laundered by a Russian socialite. Working with their US, French and Irish counterparts, investigators established that the laundering network, known as Smart, and another, called TGR, were shifting billions of pounds.
The NCA’s investigators believe the TGR network has “supported companies involved in the Russian military-industrial base”. It has, they say, “facilitated the export of electronic components to Russia”.
Western countries have imposed sanctions seeking to restrict the Putin regime’s access to computer chips and other hard-to-find components for drones and missiles, yet the weapons continue to rain down on Ukraine. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in October that the weapons systems Russia used in a single day of deadly air attacks contained more than 100,000 foreign-made parts, including British microcomputers.
NCA investigators say Russian intelligence agents tried to fund a spy ring of six Bulgarians it was running in the UK via the Smart laundering network. The espionage included hunting an investigative journalist who had helped implicate Russian spies in the poisoning of the opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The Bulgarians were jailed in May after an Old Bailey trial.
The networks have also helped rich Russians in the west access cash – as much as £100,000 a time – to maintain the lifestyles to which they are accustomed despite sanctions, the investigators say.
The NCA has little hold over Tether, a spectacularly profitable venture in a largely unregulated industry based in a Central American dictatorship.
Melki said: “We work with any global crypto firm that wants to work with us, in addition to those regulated in the UK, but there’s no free pass for crypto firms. They all have a role to play in limiting their exposure to bad actors.”
The Tether representative said it had “a proven track record as the industry leader in working with global law enforcement to stop bad actors”.
The company has frozen or blocked more than $3.4bn in USDT in collaboration with more than 300 agencies in 62 countries, the representative added.
Crypto
Institutional Crypto Adoption ‘Happening Now’: Ripple Executive Says Real-World Use Cases Taking Hold
Key Takeaways:
- Ripple says institutional adoption of digital assets is happening now.
- Craddock states the focus has shifted to infrastructure and real-world use cases.
- Paris events showed strong momentum, with Ripple citing real industry energy.
Institutional Digital Asset Adoption Gains Momentum
Institutional adoption of digital assets is gaining momentum across global finance, marking a decisive shift as major firms move beyond experimentation into active deployment. Ripple’s managing director for the U.K. and Europe, Cassie Craddock, reinforced this momentum on April 20, pointing to Paris Blockchain Week 2026 and related industry events as evidence that large-scale crypto adoption is already underway.
Craddock stated on social media platform X:
“Institutional adoption of digital assets isn’t something that’s on the horizon. It’s happening now.”
“The debate has moved on. The focus is on infrastructure and real-world use cases. And the people I was fortunate enough to spend time with this week are the ones building it. Banks, asset managers, fintechs, and regulators, all discussing how to do this properly and at scale,” she further shared.
The executive tied that view to meetings held across the Ripple Roadshow Paris, Paris Blockchain Week itself, Mastercard Crypto Day at the Eiffel Tower, and Société Générale-FORGE’s event at the French Ministry of Finance. She explained that discussions no longer centered on whether institutions would engage with the sector. Instead, participants examined infrastructure, deployment standards, and real-world use cases that could support broader activity across regulated financial markets.
Paris Events Highlight Structured Industry Buildout
The comments suggest that digital asset conversations among large organizations are becoming more operational. Craddock referenced exchanges with speakers including David Durouchoux, Myles Harrison, and Frédéric Dalibard, while also highlighting the presence of banks, asset managers, fintechs, and regulators. That mix suggests several parts of the financial system are considering similar questions around scale and execution. Rather than focusing on abstract potential, the gatherings in Paris appeared to center on how institutions can build and apply digital asset systems in a structured way.
The Ripple executive added that the people involved in those meetings are “the ones building it.” She also concluded:
“The energy was real, the momentum even more so.”
These remarks reflect Ripple’s view that institutional interest is moving from long-term expectation to active development. By stressing implementation and participation from established financial groups, the post framed Paris Blockchain Week as a signal that digital asset adoption is advancing within mainstream finance.
Crypto
Scattered Spider hacker pleads guilty to stealing $8 million in cryptocurrency – Help Net Security
A British national tied to the Scattered Spider cybercrime group pleaded guilty to hacking multiple companies via SMS phishing and stealing over $8 million in virtual currency from US victims.
Tyler Robert Buchanan, 24, of Dundee, Scotland, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
In November 2024, US authorities unsealed criminal charges against Buchanan and four other alleged members of the Scattered Spider group, accusing them of using phishing text messages to steal employee credentials, breach company systems and steal cryptocurrency.
According to court documents, Buchanan and his co-conspirators conducted cyber intrusions and virtual currency thefts between September 2021 and April 2023.
The victims included interactive entertainment, telecommunications and technology companies, as well as business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT service providers, cloud communications firms, virtual currency companies and individual victims.
“As part of the scheme, Buchanan and his co-conspirators conducted Short Message Service (SMS) phishing attacks by sending hundreds of SMS phishing messages to the mobile telephones of a victim company’s employees. The messages purported to be from the victim company or a contracted IT or BPO supplier for the victim company,” the Justice Department said.
“The SMS phishing messages contained links to phishing websites designed to look like legitimate websites of a victim company or a contracted IT or BPO supplier. The websites then lured the recipient into providing confidential information, including personal identifying information (PII), and account usernames and passwords.”
In April 2023, police found on a digital device at Buchanan’s residence in Scotland the names and addresses of numerous victims, including a text file containing cryptocurrency seed phrases and login credentials for one account.
Buchanan has been in federal custody since April 2025 and faces up to 22 years in federal prison.
Co-conspirator Noah Michael Urban is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence and was ordered to pay $13 million in restitution after pleading guilty in April 2025 to fraud-related charges. Three other defendants charged alongside Buchanan, including Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, Evans Onyeaka Osiebo and Joel Martin Evans, still face criminal charges in the case.
Scattered Spider is a cybercrime collective, also known as UNC3944, Muddled Libra and Octo Tempest, made up largely of young, native English-speaking hackers who use social engineering, including impersonating IT and help-desk staff, to gain initial access, bypass MFA, and compromise enterprise networks.
The group gained notoriety for its role in high-profile hacking and extortion attacks against Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International, two of the largest casino operators in the US.
Although authorities have increased pressure on the group and arrested several members, including four they consider responsible for ransomware attacks targeting UK-based retailers last year, the group continues to operate, with new members replacing those arrested.
Key Takeaways:
- Ripple outlines a phased roadmap to prepare XRPL for quantum-era cryptography risks.
- Industry momentum grows as XRPL testing highlights performance and security tradeoffs.
- Developers at Ripple will expand testing to balance innovation with network stability.
Ripple Maps Quantum Security Strategy
Ripple’s post-quantum strategy reflects a growing shift in blockchain security as quantum computing risks gain credibility. The company’s latest Insight, published April 20 by Senior Director of Engineering Ayo Akinyele, outlined a structured roadmap to prepare the XRP Ledger for future cryptographic disruption while preserving network performance.
The Insight stated:
“Ripple is introducing a multi-phase roadmap to prepare the XRP Ledger (XRPL) for a post-quantum future, with a target for full readiness by 2028.”
It also detailed collaboration efforts: “Ripple is working with Project Eleven to accelerate development, including validator testing and early custody prototypes.”
Akinyele explained that quantum security is becoming more relevant because blockchain networks rely on cryptographic systems that could eventually be broken by sufficiently advanced quantum computers. On XRPL, each signed transaction reveals a public key on-chain, which could weaken long-term wallet security in a post-quantum environment.
He also pointed to the “harvest now, decrypt later” threat, where attackers collect cryptographic data today and wait for future quantum capabilities to exploit it. While this does not indicate an immediate failure of current protections, it increases the urgency of preparing systems that secure long-duration value. These risks reinforce the need for early testing of quantum-resistant cryptographic systems and structured migration planning.
XRPL Testing Targets Long-Term Stability
Ripple’s roadmap consists of four phases, starting with contingency planning for a potential failure of existing cryptographic standards. This includes a “Quantum-Day” framework designed to enable secure migration to post-quantum accounts if vulnerabilities emerge. Additional phases focus on evaluating National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-recommended algorithms under real network conditions, measuring impacts on throughput, storage, and verification efficiency. XRPL’s native features, including key rotation and deterministic key generation, provide a technical advantage by enabling gradual migration without forcing users to abandon existing accounts. Parallel testing on development networks will allow developers to assess performance tradeoffs before broader implementation.
The senior director of engineering emphasized long-term execution and coordination, stating:
“We should not view addressing the quantum threat on XRPL as a single upgrade, but rather a multi-phased strategy of carefully migrating a live, global financial infrastructure without compromising the value of digital assets protected by the XRPL.”
Akinyele indicated that achieving post-quantum readiness requires balancing cryptographic innovation with operational stability, ensuring the network remains efficient while adapting to future security challenges.
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