The Worldwide Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) Coin Laundry investigation discovered illicit funds have been funneled by main cryptocurrency exchanges, together with Binance, OKX, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit, and Kucoin, as a part of a world shadow financial system benefiting from legal proceeds.
The ten-month cross-border challenge, which was carried out with 37 media companions in 35 international locations, gathered a whole bunch of pockets addresses linked to scams, theft, sanctions violations, and different illicit exercise, and traced tens of hundreds of transactions throughout public blockchains.
Felony Money Throughout World’s Largest Exchanges
The investigation discovered 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 lately as July 2025. This contributed to greater than $408 million in whole transfers from July 2024 to July 2025.
These flows continued even whereas Binance operated underneath two court-appointed displays 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.
Based on ICIJ, these transfers persevered regardless of Huione’s designation in Might as a serious laundering concern. Reporters additionally examined how so-called money desks and courier providers working in cities comparable to Hong Kong, Toronto, London, and Istanbul enable customers to anonymously money out massive sums of cryptocurrency outdoors regulatory oversight, forming one other channel by which illicit proceeds attain or exit exchanges.
The report moreover documented how rip-off victims throughout 12 international locations noticed their stolen funds transfer by these identical main platforms. To spotlight the size of legal exercise utilizing crypto infrastructure, the investigation detailed the alleged pyramid and Ponzi scheme led by Vladimir Okhotnikov, who was accused of stealing no less than $340 million from traders between 2020 and 2022 by way of a manipulated cryptocurrency funding platform and persevering with to run related schemes from Dubai.
Nameless Wallets and “Swappers”
Whereas blockchain information present transparency, ICIJ reported that criminals use nameless wallets and instruments comparable to “swappers” to complicate tracing, creating main tracing challenges for trade compliance groups. Greater than a dozen former compliance employees at corporations together with Binance and OKX instructed ICIJ they struggled to maintain up with more and more refined laundering methods.
Regulators globally have imposed no 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.
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