CEO Of BTC Mixer Helix Pleads Guilty To Dark Web Money Laundering

The CEO of BTC Mixer Helix Larry Harmon, plead guilty to dark web money laundering while planning to argue that the mixer was a privacy service so let’s read more in our latest Bitcoin news.

The CEO of BTC mixer Helix pled guilty to conspiracy to launder money on sites like Alpha Bay after years of running his company as a service which scrambles the origins of crypto transactions in one way that makes them hard for law enforcement to trace, leading to his arrest in 2017 on charges like conspiracy to commit money laundering.

After fighting the case for a few years, Larry Harmon decided to plead guilty to money laundering charges on Wednesday morning in federal court in Washington DC. The plea came on the verge of the trial in which Harmon was prepared to argue that the mixing service known as Helix wasn’t laundering money but it was a way to increase privacy and facilitate the use of BTC. His decision to plead guilty suggests his privacy arguments were to fail before teh evidence that Helix initially served dark websites like the popular Alpha Bay which served as a marketplace to purchase illicit drugs and to host other illegal services.

During his time working with Alpha Bay, Helix laundered 354,468 BTC which was around $300 million at the time but that sum would have reached billions of dollars. Don Fort, chief of IRS Criminal Investigation said:

“The sole purpose of Harmon’s operation was to conceal criminal transactions from law enforcement on the Darknet, and because of our growing expertise in this area, he could not make good on that promise.”

Harmon’s decision to plead guilty only shows how law enforcement came to regard crypto mixers known as tumblers as criminal even if some people use them for legitimate purposes. The Justice Department still has to reveal Harmon’s plea argument including whether the amount of prison time he will have to serve. In such agreements, defendants usually agree to share details of the criminal operations in order to reduce the length of the sentence but according to the court records, Harmon is only pleading guilty to the count of conspiracy to commit laundering while the Justice Department will have to drop the other charges related to operating an unlicensed money transmitter.

Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/bitcoin-news/ceo-of-btc-mixer-helix-pleads-guilty-to-dark-web-money-laundering/