Ohio man Larry Harmon spent years running a Bitcoin mixer—a service that scrambles the origins of crypto transactions in a way that makes them hard for law enforcement to trace—which led to his arrest in 2017 on charges that included conspiracy to commit money laundering.
After fighting the case for years, Harmon pled guilty to the money laundering charges on Wednesday morning in federal court in Washington, DC.
The plea came on the cusp on a trial in which Harmon was prepared to argue that his mixing service, known as Helix, was not a money laundering tool but rather a means to increase privacy and facilitate the use of Bitcoin.
His decision to plead guilty suggests his privacy arguments were likely to fail in the face of the government evidence that Helix primarily served dark web sites like the now-shuttered Alpha Bay, which served as a market place to buy illicit drugs and a host of other illegal services.
During his time working with Alpha Bay, Helix laundered roughly 354,468
Źródło: https://decrypt.co/78875/bitcoin-mixer-ceo-pleads-guilty-dark-web-money-laundering
