1) The Cayman Islands Department of Financial Services announced on October 31 that it will decide how the Cayman Islands will supervise and enforce anti-money laundering (AML) and combating terrorist financing (CFT) measures.

2) The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner said in an interview that the latest charges against BitMEX by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have sparked the crypto industry’s awareness of U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) and The focus on Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations conveys to the crypto industry the message that US laws need to be enforced when products and services involve US users.

3) The seminar on the application of anti-money laundering standards in the blockchain industry conducted in-depth discussions and exchanges on the content of the "General Requirements for the Application of Anti-Money Laundering in the Blockchain Industry". Consensus of "Blockchain Industry Application Anti-Money Laundering Technology Alliance".

4) Indian officials have not given a clear definition of encrypted transactions. In order to promote a clear official attitude, members of the Indian encrypted community proposed to include encrypted assets in the regulatory sandbox. The sandbox allows the tracking of encrypted transactions and includes general features such as anti-money laundering and KYC.

5) The Financial Information Analysis Institute (FIU) of the Financial Services Commission of Korea announced that it will issue a legislative notice for the implementation of the legislative amendments to the Specific Financial Information Act from November 3. According to the implementation regulations, virtual asset service providers will be prohibited from trading anonymous coins and processing virtual assets with money laundering risks. Virtual asset providers will not be able to process transactions related to prepaid cards, mobile gift certificates and electronic bonds.

6) The Isle of Man Financial Services Authority (FSA) issued blockchain and cryptocurrency regulations. The specific regulatory treatment will depend on the nature of the token, with regulators considering “substance rather than form,” the FSA said. The regulations state that although cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH are not regulated by the FSA, companies that own such assets must register with the FSA as designated businesses and comply with anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing requirements.

7) The Criminal Law Amendment (Eleventh) Draft Second Review Draft was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for deliberation on the 13th. The draft made clear provisions on "self-laundering" after serious crimes and related doping violations. The second draft of the draft supplemented and perfected the crime of manipulating the securities and futures markets, and further tightened the criminal law. The crime of money laundering is amended, and "self-laundering" after some serious crimes are committed is clearly defined as a crime. At the same time, relevant money laundering behavior methods are improved, and money laundering by underground banks through "payment" settlement methods is added. The draft also adds provisions to increase the punishment for units committing fund-raising fraud.

8) The Wall Street Journal published a column stating that central banks of various countries are pouring into digital currencies without considering that the risks may outweigh the benefits. The article pointed out that a survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements earlier this year found that one in five central banks is likely to issue some form of digital currency within the next six years. But this rush could cause some serious problems. Due to the security and anonymity of digital currencies, depositing money in banks will become less attractive. That would reduce the banks' most stable source of funding, making them more vulnerable. At the same time, the only real benefits of digital currencies are security and privacy, but even that is not in the interest of countries as it would weaken their efforts to combat money laundering.

9) According to the European Union's Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5), the Dutch Central Bank has authorized the digital asset company AMDAX BV to operate under its jurisdiction. This marks the first crypto service approved by the Dutch central bank. Previously, the Netherlands introduced strict regulations that caused many crypto businesses to close their doors or leave the Netherlands.

10) A report released by the blockchain research company CipherTrace shows that 56% of centralized virtual asset exchanges lack strong KYC measures, and 81% of decentralized exchanges have almost no user verification. Crime and international sanctions open a door. CipherTrace highlights Uniswap, a protocol that has seen huge volumes over the past few months. Juan Llanos of consultancy Juan Llanos Advisors said the law says transactions cannot be anonymous, but DEXs are considered unregulated, so they are a loophole, meaning a potential means of money laundering.

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1) The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced on Thursday the indictment submitted to the U.S. Eastern District Court of Virginia on September 24. The defendants are 45-year-old Xizhi Li, 40-year-old Jianxing Chen, 46-year-old Jiayu Chen, 43 Eric Yong Woo, 47, Jingyuan Li, 47, and Tao Liu, 45. The Justice Department said the six were members of an organization that used casinos and other facilities to launder "millions of dollars" for Mexican drug cartels.

2) A couple in Hilversum, the Netherlands, were sentenced to two years and two and a half years in prison for money laundering for using bitcoin on a dark web service. Additionally, the Rotterdam District Court confiscated 2,532 bitcoins ($29 million) and 250,000 euros ($295,000) from the couple.

3) On October 15, Europol announced an operation in 16 countries, arresting 20 members of the QQAAZZ criminal network. The group has been accused of laundering tens of millions of euros for top cybercriminals since 2016 through international bank accounts, shell companies in Poland and Bulgaria, and cryptocurrency mixing services.

4) A 40-year-old man from Auckland, New Zealand faces a series of charges for money laundering through allegedly improper cryptocurrency transactions and the purchase of luxury cars. The man appeared in Auckland District Court on Thursday to face a total of 30 charges, NZHerald reported. He is accused of accepting thousands of New Zealand dollars to buy cryptocurrencies as part of a money laundering transaction.

5) According to sources in the Spanish National Police, Arbistar 2.0 CEO Santiago Fuentes was finally captured and detained by the Tenerife regional police in southern Spain on October 22. Fuentes is accused of defrauding nearly 32,000 investors in a bitcoin Ponzi scheme worth nearly 850 million euros (about $1 billion).

6) In a cross-border online gambling case detected by the Huizhou police, the police who handled the case discovered a new form of the scoring model. The police handling the case said that this case is the first case in the country to use USDT (called TEDA currency in Chinese) to operate a benchmarking platform. The police handling the case stated that vigilance and attention should be paid to the new benchmarking platform using the USDT digital currency channel. In essence, all the scoring models are carefully researched by illegal gambling websites to avoid crackdowns, facilitate payment and money laundering.

7) The Guangzhou Public Security Bureau issued an official document stating that on October 3, a citizen, Ms. Pan, reported to the Yunpu Police Station, saying that she met a "netizen" in September, and was later induced by the other party to download a fake app in the name of investing in digital currency. A total of 2.32 million yuan has been invested successively, and it is currently impossible to withdraw cash. The Huangpu Public Security urgently reminds us to treat digital currency rationally, and report to the police as soon as possible if we have any doubts or find that we have been cheated.

8) Recently, Lin, a resident of Furong District in Changsha, reported to the police that he was defrauded of investing in digital currency of more than 3.2 million yuan. It is reported that Lin downloaded an app called "AOC" through a website link sent by a "teacher" in a WeChat group, and registered an account. Lin transferred a total of more than 3.2739 million yuan to 13 different bank accounts provided by the other party 25 times. A few days later, the App showed that the digital currency he purchased plummeted by 80%. When Lin called the police, the app could no longer be logged in, and the "teacher" WeChat account had also been blocked and lost contact. The case is currently under investigation.

9) The Xuzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau has successfully detected a "CDBC digital currency" large-scale national asset unfreezing fraud case, arrested 16 suspects, seized more than 60 computers, mobile phones, and bank cards, and frozen more than 1.5 million yuan of funds involved in the case. It has the record of arresting the largest number of such cases at one time in the internal investigation. It is reported that the gang claimed that "CDBC digital currency" is the first batch of digital currency issued by the central bank. One order is 100 yuan, and each person is limited to 7 orders. In the future, it will be doubled by 100 times and 1000 times. At present, all 16 suspects have been transferred to the prosecution The agency prosecuted.

10) A few days ago, the police in Huanghua, Hebei successfully smashed a trans-provincial telecommunications fraud criminal gang and arrested 3 suspects, involving more than 1.2 million yuan. It is reported that the criminal gang used an investment app to carry out fraud by using virtual currency to buy and sell electronic pets.

11) A few days ago, the Pudong police successfully smashed a den of virtual currency investment fraud and arrested 22 suspects. The case involved a total amount of 7.9 million yuan. It is reported that the "HASTE" virtual currency trading platform involved in the case was developed and maintained by technical staff of a technology company founded by the criminal suspect Wu, and sold the use rights to overseas personnel. The platform can directly change the amount of virtual currency of users on the platform at will, and simulate and control the exchange rate trend of virtual currency through the operation "robot".

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As shown in the figure above, in October, PeckShield has counted the outflow of "suspicious assets" from the major exchanges in the address tags of 49,900 BTC, totaling 713 million US dollars, of which the top ten are Binance, Huobi, ZB, Bitget, Bithumb, Bitfinex, Gemini, BitMEX, OKEx, Kraken.