Ryan Farace, nicknamed Xanaxman, a dark web drug dealer
now serving a 57-month term, was recently arrested for laundering $137 million
in Bitcoin.
According to a federal court indictment filed last week
in Maryland, Farace, with the help of his father Joseph Farace, may have
maintained his illicit drug selling activities while in jail and laundered a
large amount of money between October 2019 and April 2021.
In February, the US Drug Enforcement Administration
confiscated 2,875 Bitcoins from addresses connected to Farace, and another 59
Bitcoins in May. The total worth of the confiscated Bitcoins is more than $137
million at today's market pricing.
Dealing with Bitcoins is a skill that you should have.
Farace is now spending time in jail for selling
Alprazolam, a kind of Xanax, on the dark web. In addition, he accepted
cryptocurrency payments.
Farace was sentenced to lose approximately 4,000
Bitcoins, which he acquired from his illicit drug-selling company, according to
a court ruling issued in November 2018. The value of those Bitcoins has risen
to $187.2 million. He had to give up $5.6 million in cash and property, which
he acquired from the profits of his illicit drug operation, in addition to the
cryptos.
However, the new court papers did not say if the enforcement
agency was previously aware of the newly confiscated Bitcoins or whether Farace
obtained them while incarcerated.
Authorities have long been concerned about the use of
cryptocurrency in dark web activities. Governments used this as one of their reasons
to discourage the adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The closure of the notorious The Silk Road in 2013, which was one of the biggest illicit marketplaces for the sale of narcotics, resulted in one of the largest Bitcoin busts from the dark web. According to a study published by Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis company, approximately $800 million in cryptocurrencies were transferred to dark web activities in 2019.
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