German police close 47 criminal crypto exchanges

German law enforcement agencies have dismantled dozens of crypto exchanges that they accused of facilitating money laundering and other crimes.

Officials from the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor's office – Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) – and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) were involved in the operation, which targeted 47 stock exchanges.

In a statement from the BKA, it was said that the exchanges had deliberately concealed the origin of criminal funds on a large scale by not conducting Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. In particular, they had not registered new customers or checked identity documents, which allowed their “customers” to anonymously launder funds into other digital currencies.

In this way, the exchanges provided an essential service for cybercriminals such as ransomware actors, darknet traders and botnet operators, the BKA argued.

Read more about law enforcement in Germany: German police bust darknet hosting cyberbunker business

Operation Final Exchange, as it was called, resulted in the seizure of dozens of servers linked to the exchanges, meaning investigators now have many leads to follow as they try to track down the people using platforms such as Xchange.cash, Multichange.net and CoinBlinker.com.

“The operators of these criminal exchanges have been fooling people for years into believing that their hosting is untraceable, that they do not store any customer data and that all data is deleted immediately after the transaction. A seemingly unregulated hub through which one can launder the proceeds of one's criminal activities without having to fear prosecution. In our view: nothing but empty promises,” says a police statement hosted on the recorded domains.

“We have found and secured their servers – development servers, production servers, backup servers. We have their data – and therefore your data too. Transactions, registration data, IP addresses. Our search for clues begins. See you soon.”

According to BKD, this dismantling of the “infrastructure” of cybercrime represents an important strategy, as many cybercrime groups operate with impunity from hostile states such as Russia.

His current efforts follow two notable operations in 2023 that resulted in the takedown of prolific crypto mixer ChipMixer and dark web marketplace Kingdom Market.