Canada Fines Cybercrime Friendly Cryptomus $176m

>The penalties for violating Canada’s anti money-laundering laws come ten months after KrebsOnSecurity noted that Cryptomus’s Vancouver street address was home to dozens of foreign currency dealers, money transfer businesses, and cryptocurrency exchanges — none of which were physically located there.

If I was Brian (Krebs) I would greatly increase my own personal security after this. I'm absolutely not expecting something to happen to him but $176M is no joke and these guys not particularly lawful.

So who went to jail?

The article is written to mislead the reader, like a propaganda piece, instead of using neutral language, for example:

> Cryptomus’s Vancouver street address was home to dozens of foreign currency dealers, money transfer businesses, and cryptocurrency exchanges — none of which were physically located there.

That's absolutely normal - in US many companies are not located at the address they are registered at (for example, to pay less taxes).

> These platforms were built for Russian speakers, and they each advertised the ability to anonymously swap one form of cryptocurrency for another,

Russians are not subject to Canada laws.

> They also allowed the exchange of cryptocurrency for cash in accounts at some of Russia’s largest banks — nearly all of which are currently sanctioned by the United States and other western nations.

US "sanctions" are merely a local regulation and do not apply to Russia or other countries. The article tries to present it as if sanctions were an international law (but there is no such things as universal international law).

> anonymity or “proxy” providers

Internet anonymity is almost an universal human right.

> anonymous SMS services

What's wrong with this? Should we fill a visa application before sending an SMS?