How Criminal Millions Sprinted Through Binance, OKX, and Other Top Crypto Exchanges
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) Coin Laundry investigation discovered illicit funds have been funneled via main cryptocurrency exchanges, together with Binance, OKX, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit, and Kucoin, as a part of a worldwide shadow financial system benefiting from felony proceeds.
The 10-month cross-border undertaking, which was carried out with 37 media companions in 35 international locations, gathered tons of of pockets addresses linked to scams, theft, sanctions violations, and different illicit exercise, and traced tens of hundreds of transactions throughout public blockchains.
Criminal Cash Across World’s Biggest Exchanges
The investigation found that cash launderers working for drug traffickers, Southeast Asian rip-off networks, and North Korean hacking teams routinely used main exchanges to maneuver their funds.
An necessary discovering revealed that Huione Group, a Cambodian monetary establishment designated by US authorities as a “main cash laundering concern,” despatched round $1 million price of USDT per day to accounts at Binance as just lately as July 2025. This contributed to greater than $408 million in complete transfers from July 2024 to July 2025.
These flows continued even whereas Binance operated beneath two court-appointed screens as a part of its November 2023 plea deal for violating US anti-money laundering legal guidelines, which required the corporate to pay $4.3 billion. The investigation additionally discovered that greater than $226 million entered buyer accounts at OKX from Huione within the 5 months after OKX pleaded responsible within the US in February 2025 to working an unlicensed cash transmitter and agreed to pay over $504 million in penalties.
According to ICIJ, these transfers persevered regardless of Huione’s designation in May as a serious laundering concern. Reporters additionally examined how so-called money desks and courier companies working in cities reminiscent of Hong Kong, Toronto, London, and Istanbul enable customers to anonymously money out giant sums of cryptocurrency exterior regulatory oversight, forming one other channel via which illicit proceeds attain or exit exchanges.
The report moreover documented how rip-off victims throughout 12 international locations noticed their stolen funds transfer via these similar main platforms. To spotlight the dimensions of felony exercise utilizing crypto infrastructure, the investigation detailed the alleged pyramid and Ponzi scheme led by Vladimir Okhotnikov, who was accused of stealing not less than $340 million from buyers between 2020 and 2022 by way of a manipulated cryptocurrency funding platform and persevering with to run related schemes from Dubai.
Anonymous Wallets and “Swappers”
While blockchain data present transparency, ICIJ reported that criminals use nameless wallets and instruments reminiscent of “swappers” to complicate tracing, creating main tracing challenges for alternate compliance groups. More than a dozen former compliance staff at corporations together with Binance and OKX instructed ICIJ they struggled to maintain up with more and more subtle laundering methods.
Regulators globally have imposed not less than $5.8 billion in fines and penalties on crypto exchanges, however oversight stays fragmented, whilst US authorities estimate $9.3 billion in crypto-related losses in 2024.
The put up How Criminal Millions Sprinted Through Binance, OKX, and Other Top Crypto Exchanges appeared first on CryptoPotato.
