Illicit Finance

The surging value of Pokémon trading cards has attracted organized-crime groups seeking to launder illicit funds through the largely unregulated collectables market.

Russian intelligence-linked hackers who penetrated the U.S. Treasury Department in the 2020 SolarWinds cyberattack gained the ability to access email accounts across the entire agency, including staff working on sanctions and financial-crime investigations.

Bitcoin Depot, formerly the largest operator of cryptocurrency ATMs in the United States, filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday and took its roughly 9,700 kiosks offline.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating a surge of more than $800 million in oil futures trades that occurred moments before President Trump announced on social media that he was postponing strikes on Tehran’s energy infrastructure.

Gérard Lhéritier, the French businessman convicted of running what prosecutors called the largest Ponzi scheme ever uncovered in France, has avoided prison after negotiating a last-minute plea bargain citing age and health.

Spain’s National Court has charged former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with money laundering, influence peddling, document falsification, and related criminal offenses stemming from the government’s €53-million pandemic-era bailout of Plus Ultra airlines.

Iran has launched a bitcoin-backed insurance service for shipping companies seeking to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

Alex Saab, the businessman widely seen as the financial fixer for ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was charged with money laundering in federal court in Miami on Monday.

Britain’s National Crime Agency on Monday launched its first joint initiative with the financial industry aimed at detecting and disrupting payments by U.K. offenders who pay facilitators overseas to livestream the sexual abuse of children. 

The president of South America’s soccer federation faces an ethics complaint alleging he took millions of dollars from funds the body recovered after the 2015 global soccer corruption scandal.