A Los Angeles man pleaded guilty to running a $25 million Bitcoin (BTC) money laundering scheme and sale of methamphetamine.
Possible life sentence
News
outlet U.S. News reported on Aug. 23 that 25-year-old Kunal Kalra has
pleaded guilty to charges including money laundering and distributing
methamphetamines. Per the report, he could be sentenced to life in
prison.
The authorities allegedly claim that from 2015
through 2017 Kalra exchanged BTC and dollars, ran a Bitcoin ATM and
admitted to making deals with drug dealers and other criminals.
Sold meth to an undercover agent
Kalra
also reportedly sold two pounds of meth to an undercover law
enforcement agent. According to the report, he also faces money
laundering charges in Texas, which were filed earlier this month.
As Cointelegraph recently
reported, the United States Department of the Treasury has added
multiple cryptocurrency addresses to its Specially Designated Nationals
(SDN) list under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, also
known as the Kingpin Act.
In July, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said
that the authority will work to prevent Bitcoin from becoming an
“equivalent of Swiss-numbered bank accounts.” According to Mnuchin, the
government combats “bad actors in the U.S. dollar every day to protect
the U.S. financial system.”
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