Pakistani Company Sold Fake KYC Docs To Russian Trolls For BTC

A Pakistani company sold fake KYC docs to Russian trolls for BTC according to the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control which sanctioned 16 groups and 16 persons for meddling in the 2020 election as we can see more in our latest bitcoin news.

OFAC levied the sanctions against 16 groups and 16 people today and landed on the Specially designated nationals and Blocked Person list for seeking to undermine US elections. A few used cryptocurrency to facilitate their activities and the 2020 election ended over five months ago but the US isn’t done litigating it.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is responsible for enforcing economic sanctions and announced today that they sanctioned 16 groups and 16 people that allegedly undermine the integrity of the election while President Biden issued an executive order declaring a national emergency that is related to alleged Russian meddling. A few 32 groups and individuals that were sanctioned used cryptocurrency to finance their activities as per blockchain tracking company Chainalaysis.

Some of the Pakistani companies include SouthFront which is an English-language website that answers to Russia’s Federal Security Service, the Secondeye Solution which provides fraudulent ID documents, Mujtaba Ali Raza, and the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation. SouthFront received $12,146 in BTC, BCH, and ETH. AFRIC has ZEC and DASH wallets but hasn’t received any coins. Raza took in over $14K in BTC and LTC.

The real crypto power user in the group is the SES which received 31,000 transactions worth over $2.5 million since 2013 as the forensics said. Secondeye’s reasoning is creating synthetic identification documents. Chainalaysis wrote:

 “In fact, Secondeye’s documents were only in digital JPEG format, with no physical documents provided, making it difficult to imagine use cases other than fooling remote photo or video-based KYC checks.”

In addition to online payment services like Payoneer, SES accepts BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC. The Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen commented on the Pakistani company:

 “Treasury will target Russian leaders, officials, intelligence services, and their proxies that attempt to interfere in the U.S. electoral process or subvert U.S. democracy. This is the start of a new U.S. campaign against Russian malign behavior.”

According to Chainalysis, Secondeye maintains active BTC addresses at large exchanges and received crypto via darknet markets, mixers and high-risk exchanges.  According to a Secondeye spokesman said:

“WE ARE NO MORE TAKING ORDERS.”

Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/bitcoin-news/pakistani-company-sold-fake-kyc-docs-to-russian-trolls-for-btc/