Child Exploitation

Cryptocurrency flows to suspected human trafficking services surged 85% in 2025, reaching hundreds of millions of dollars across identified services.

Deutsche Bank continued providing services to Jeffrey Epstein for months after telling the disgraced financier it would end its relationship with him in late 2018 and only moved to terminate all of his accounts following his final arrest in July 2019.

Paxful Holdings Inc., a peer-to-peer virtual currency trading platform, was sentenced on Tuesday to pay a $4-million criminal penalty after pleading guilty to conspiracies tied to illegal prostitution, anti-money-laundering failures and transmitting criminal proceeds.

The Council of Europe’s anti-money-laundering body on Tuesday published a new report on how criminals exploit crypto-assets to launder illicit proceeds, fund terrorism, and evade sanctions.

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein made an early investment into Coinbase Global Inc. in 2014, putting roughly $3 million into the crypto exchange, according to emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice and reviewed by Decrypt.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, is pressing Bank of New York Mellon Corp. for details about $378 million in wire transfers the bank processed involving accounts linked to Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Bloomberg report.

The U.S. government is threatening to downgrade Fiji to the lowest tier in its global human trafficking rankings unless authorities take “decisive action” against a religious group linked to human trafficking and transnational organized crime, OCCRP reported. 

Wildlife traffickers are funneling dirty money through the same financial pipelines used for such illicit activity as human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, and the illegal sale of weapons around the world, according to new University of Waterloo research cited by CBC News. 

The Central Bank of Ireland has fined cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase €21.5 million for failing to properly monitor transactions, including activity potentially linked to child sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes.