German police claim to have seized tens of millions of euros and server infrastructure associated with notorious crypto-swapping service eXch.
The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said in a statement that the €34m ($38m) haul of Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin and Dash was the third largest in its history.
Available on the surface and dark web, eXch enabled users to exchange cryptocurrencies for others, and was therefore favored by cybercriminals and money launderers, who valued the anonymity it promised users.
It’s believed that at least $1.9bn in crypto assets were laundered through the platform since it was launched in 2014, including some of the funds stolen by North Korea from Bybit in the world’s largest crypto heist to date.
Read more on criminal crypto services: Man Gets 12.5 Years for Running Bitcoin Fog Crypto Mixer.
The BKA teamed up with the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor’s Office – Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) to make the seizure on April 30 after eXch’s operators had announced the service would close for good on May 1. They also took 8TB of data residing on the firm’s servers.
“Once again, we have secured a record-breaking sum of millions in incriminated cryptocurrencies and shut down a digital money laundering platform,” said BKA Director, Carsten Meywirth.
“The scale of the incident impressively demonstrates that cybercrimes are being committed on an industrial scale. We will continue to increase the risk of loss for the underground economy with all the means at our disposal. Our goal remains to hold those responsible accountable.”
Although the German authorities maintain the service is now offline, a blog post from blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs last week claimed that, as of May 2, it was still capable of providing some services.
“eXch continues to offer application programming interface (API) access to its business partners and TRM has observed continued on-chain activity – including laundering behavior consistent with its mixed-pool infrastructure,” it said.
The firm explained that eXch had also been singled out for action after it refused to cooperate with Bybit’s attempts to claw back money stolen from it. It is also “one of the primary destinations for CSAM funds,” with at least $300,000 linked to it from these sources, TRM said.