Financial regulators in Canada this week levied $176 million in fines against Cryptomus, a digital payments platform that supports dozens of Russian cryptocurrency exchanges and websites hawking cybercrime services. The penalties for violating Canada’s anti money-laundering laws come ten months after KrebsOnSecurity noted that Cryptomus’s Vancouver street address was home to dozens of foreign currency dealers, money transfer businesses, and cryptocurrency exchanges — none of which were physically located there.
On October 16, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada (FINTRAC) imposed a $176,960,190 penalty on Xeltox Enterprises Ltd., more commonly known as the cryptocurrency payments platform Cryptomus.
FINTRAC found that Cryptomus failed to submit suspicious transaction reports in cases where there were reasonable grounds to suspect that they were related to the laundering of proceeds connected to trafficking in child sexual abuse material, fraud, ransomware payments and sanctions evasion.
“Given that numerous violations in this case were connected to trafficking in child sexual abuse material, fraud, ransomware payments and sanctions evasion, FINTRAC was compelled to take this unprecedented enforcement action,” said Sarah Paquet, director and CEO at the regulatory agency.
In December 2024, KrebsOnSecurity covered research by blockchain analyst and investigator Richard Sanders, who’d spent several months signing up for various cybercrime services, and then tracking where their customer funds go from there. The 122 services targeted in Sanders’s research all used Cryptomus, and included some of the more prominent businesses advertising on the cybercrime forums, such as:
-abuse-friendly or “bulletproof” hosting providers like anonvm[.]wtf, and PQHosting;
-sites selling aged email, financial, or social media accounts, such as verif[.]work and kopeechka[.]store;
-anonymity or “proxy” providers like crazyrdp[.]com and rdp[.]monster;
-anonymous SMS services, including anonsim[.]net and smsboss[.]pro.
Flymoney, one of dozens of cryptocurrency exchanges apparently nested at Cryptomus. The image from this website has been machine translated from Russian.
Sanders found at least 56 cryptocurrency exchanges were using Cryptomus to process transactions, including financial entities with names like casher[.]su, grumbot[.]com, flymoney[.]biz, obama[.]ru and swop[.]is.
“These platforms were built for Russian speakers, and they each advertised the ability to anonymously swap one form of cryptocurrency for another,” the December 2024 story noted. “They also allowed the exchange of cryptocurrency for cash in accounts at some of Russia’s largest banks — nearly all of which are currently sanctioned by the United States and other western nations.”
Reached for comment on FINTRAC’s action, Sanders told KrebsOnSecurity he was surprised it took them so long.
“I have no idea why they don’t just sanction them or prosecute them,” Sanders said. “I’m not let down with the fine amount but it’s also just going to be the cost of doing business to them.”
The $173 million fine is a significant sum for FINTRAC, which imposed 23 such penalties last year totaling less than $26 million. But Sanders says FINTRAC still has much work to do in pursuing other shadowy money service businesses (MSBs) that are registered in Canada but are likely money laundering fronts for entities based in Russia and Iran.
In an investigation published in July 2024, CTV National News and the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) documented dozens of cases across Canada where multiple MSBs are incorporated at the same address, often without the knowledge or consent of the location’s actual occupant.
Their inquiry found that the street address for Cryptomus parent Xeltox Enterprises was listed as the home of at least 76 foreign currency dealers, eight MSBs, and six cryptocurrency exchanges. At that address is a three-story building that used to be a bank and now houses a massage therapy clinic and a co-working space. But the news outlets found none of the MSBs or currency dealers were paying for services at that co-working space.
The reporters also found another collection of 97 MSBs clustered at an address for a commercial office suite in Ontario, even though there was no evidence any of these companies had ever arranged for any business services at that address.
Question: What do they list an address and never use that location for purpose? Why bother listing any address at all?
too bad the Tardis mysteriously exploded itself almost a year ago just like Blades of Grass did in the drawer in the shut down building I paid rent in for years, the laptop they seek no longer felt safe and killed itself, and the phone they wanted was no longer golden and died of advanced health issues. The multiple chargers and cords, too, mysteriously didn’t feel like working. We still keep insisting lampshade has to give baby charger permission to fucking charge the laptop tho. I am certain Aladdin ain’t real.
GREAT TIMES TO COME, MAN.
I HAVE BROUGHT THE TRUTH AND THE LIGHT!
ALL HAIL POPE LIAR.
To fool people who don’t look too hard. They ostensibly collect mail without risking scrutiny of their actual operation while giving the impression that they’re legit; they have an office address. Unless you dig a bit you’re not going to know it’s a front. Unless it’s exposed it’s all upside for them.
clearly the 1800 terminations at target are a sign of some sort of IP meetness hacking. better go fetch your imaginary milk.
all them mata’s gonna die soon in a drive by olive. oh, wait, that debit card (of only mine) died in 2023. whatcha gonna do, calling that 20 soon?
ps: no, Jonah, you aren’t bringing Omar working soon ‘here’ (as a mail clerk at a bank in 2001), but calling it something else to ‘rally them dominoes’.
apparently to these fine people, brokers means ‘breaking people’. you know, to make sure we ruin that song too. all music must be ruined, just to make a point, after all. U2 must die.
it’s abuse to ‘find’ you also, without your permission.
In all seriousness, the current president is wayyyy better than the dude claiming to be the body and blood of the XP, but I need to make a blatant statement here: a legal argument that China was once Formosa, and an argument about the origin of noodles, is definitely not what I ‘signed up for’ (in fact, I hadn’t signed up for anything; you did. It’s not my job to take care of you, buddy, and contrary to the antichrist’s desires to change recruiting ages in 2010 or 2011, that didn’t make it ‘turning 10 or turning 11’ (nor does “turning 11”, by anyone’s definition, equal “equal” (nice try, dude, my almost perfect ASVAB score (and totally clean mental bill of health, but man, total exhaustion and righteous anger (not like Pulp Fiction, but keep grasping), notwithstanding)).
sounds like another case of ‘board games’ and making sure there can be only 0ne place to shop forever, where everything is imaginarily free.
reminds me of the fun times of having my legit SEO income seized when they shut liberty reserve and web money down.
my electronics still behaves as though I live at one of those Amazon stores they closed down long ago (a pity, the actual thing, not whatever this is, would probably be less emotionally exhausting; one of those open in the middle of the night would have been nice. never been to one though they keep finding me). For instance, I keep getting scorned for removing things from inside the fridge that I already paid for (when the AI isn’t trying to convince me the fridge isn’t someone I’m “feeding” and dating or something bizarre like that). This started after I shopped once or twice at a place with a bitcoin ATM. I’ve never used a bitcoin ATM though.
Which is clearly bad AI programming, of course. How do people think proper AI can be built with no sane people left to build it? And so you create monsters. Kind of the old conundrum, I guess: How do you ‘program’ a sane quasi-sentient force when you build your own idiopathies, problems, predilections, and insanity into your code (or worse, believe something like a train station on a map on google maps is actually living inside of something like a crawlspace in an old house because your mapping software vaguely ‘remembers’ it having occupied the same pixel range). This happens.
Yes obviously. If you list an address in mother ruzzia people would be suspicious. But if you present your “business” as listed in Canada this will create an aura of trust. That is why they try to find loopholes like that.
Founder of Cryptomus isn’t Russian but Uzbek. And many of Cryptomus clients are ukrainian-operated cybercriminal services.
That sounds about right. From what I’ve seen the Ukrainians are the worst of the lot.
You’ve ‘seen’ all the cybercrims to make that determination.
go back to Gozi, you little tard.
to some people BOLD fonts mean bills of lading (they’re clearly not, but by this terminology you owing over a hundred million dollars means you’re 128 million dollars richer; better be sued again (I can’t sue, but you better get rich so we can tell me how it’s fine now). so I wouldn’t worry about paying this fine, at all. you’ll be fine too. maybe you can double your fine. I wouldn’t waste your time with your buddy URI/URL. he ain’t paying the fine either. nobody wants that.
I’ve seen enough to know people using autopens calling other peoples’ pens and IP addresses thousands of miles away theirs (without even coming in contact with them or even seeing them physically) and claiming peoples’ body parts as ‘beach vacations’ criminal, yes.
‘job you (I) had’ died a while before ‘jew you are’ (or aren’t, as the case may be, though who knows) died, and both died before jya (ersatz but barely an architect) died (no doubt because the previous died and he bet his life on that other stuff, there, or maybe just my life, because, you know, common core curriculum of making sure we complete the identity documents collection we keep calling freebies; pretty sure I didn’t offer that either).
clearly you shouldn’t have thought cryptome was a ‘deal’ to ‘spread around’. unless the deal was ontological herpes.
How will Canada collect this fine? Are there any assets to seize?
Truthnut: Good question-the collection???
The addresses..?
Stéphane Bancel – July 20, 1972, Marseille, France
means he’s fine now. his name clearly said so. you can even buy steak if you want, while the last of your savings dwindles away. look, imaginary friends, too, since France (bonus, Marseille means a meat sale, or maybe another fake baby soon).
Brian Eric Bonsall, December 3, 1981, Torrance, California, U.S.
obviously the same person, after his sex change. clearly he’s fine too. but not a very good musician. I think he starred in the Bad Seed.
there, everyone in the world is now Catherine Fine.
This PSA brought to you by ‘crypto’, ‘3 shots, and telling you method programming is an addiction”, and OSINT AI: the future of America (it ain’t a miracle, kids).
and no, there will not be a damn taco night, in 1990, 1999, 2021, or otherwise.
there also aren’t gonna be any free salads just like there aren’t now.
bad news for walking scsi bus’es (with amazing magical abilities to locate people everywhere) calling themselves exes.
they’re coming for you, soon, there, character in a frigging tv show from 2014, for sure. ALL REAL! TOTALLY REAL! ALL FICTION IS REAL!
Canada isn’t getting a red cent, blue cent, or any cents. Good luck trying to tell the world about the imaginary settlement again in Potomac when no case was even filed, nor was a lawyer find. Just clearing up the confusion (also not a Stephenson novel; tough luck).
and no that nor this is not an offer of allowing things, nor to share a thing of mine either. we ain’t permitted to row a damn thing of mine.
It’s pretty crazy that Cryptomus could operate so freely in Canada with so many fake money service businesses all using the same address. Considering how long they were active and how openly they were tied to laundering, ransomware, and fraud, it’s surprising that criminal charges took so long to be filed. It really makes me question how strict Canada’s oversight is for crypto-based businesses and whether stronger enforcement could have prevented this from happening in the first place.
Not pleased with Binance pardon, but guess that was a reward for fucking the world up.
Maybe next they’ll pardon the Easter Bunny.
I keep thinking (and I’m fairly certain) that that only goal the financial industry has in ‘crypto’ now is global annihilation. Though, honestly, the way the world looks right now, maybe that’s an improvement.
The Easter Bunny died in 1981. So, no-one current would qualify. Bzzzzzzt.
we should really discuss the coin rallies that happen when people ‘help you cry’. those are awesome and by no means invasive. I’m sure that’s also good news. I especially enjoyed the rousing hit movie ‘Midsummer’. Truly, inspirational.
not clear (to me?) from the article: does “Xeltox Enterprises Ltd.” now actually have a business, offices, any assets in Canada, or are they also just a virtual company?
Pure insanity and absurdity. This is like Visa getting fined for every fraud case they didn’t preempt
Not really but ok?
There is a laptop you need to locate in the south of France. It has an M5 chip. You’re clearly trying to find the wrong person and I guarantee you the fridge you seek is not anywhere near where you’re looking.
See previous comment.
y0 mealy, wanna go in with me on a site to sweep all the m0n0p0ly prizes?
oh shyt, too late.
I do not understand why people aren’t corralling all their ‘QR codes’ to just go in and split a whopper, or whatever their flagship is.
I got fined for an internet portal having a comma in the wrong place. what’re you in for?