Topic
Methods used to evade sanctions, including relabeled cargoes, shell companies, intermediary banks, and crypto wallets moving restricted goods or payments.
In December 2024, KrebsOnSecurity reported analyst Richard Sanders's finding that all 122 cybercrime services he tested took payments through Cryptomus. The processor listed a Vancouver address, where a CTV and IJF count found at least 90 registrations.
Reality
Qurium says Aeza International and NetCrafters together originate 536 IPv4 prefixes, up from 25 at the end of 2022. It argues that operators should follow ASNs and prefixes, because the company names around them changed through two rounds of OFAC sanctions.
Reality
Russia's central bank says its digital currency law bars transfers to non-custodial wallets and allows peer-to-peer crypto trades only until July 1, 2027. Licensed intermediaries, Sberbank among them, will handle everything after that.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishersReality
DOJ raided more than 40 Texas residences on September 21-25 and seized 187 laptops and other devices it says North Koreans used in an IT-worker scheme. The FBI says the workers now also hire freelancers in South Asia and West Africa, so US hosts are one intermediary among several.
Perspective Coverage
17 publishersReality
A7A5 stablecoin transfers fell to 14 a day on Tron and 18 on Ethereum after Ukrainian drones struck Yandex data centers. Elliptic's Tom Robinson ties the two, though the issuer's own explanation so far is technical problems.
Reality
Leaked records show the Kremlin-backed A7 network listing UK fintech Wooshpay as a payment route to China and Hong Kong, capped at $50,000 a day. The published documents do not settle whether Wooshpay knew, so its partners have only the listing to assess.
Reality
Senate Democratic staff found 84% of 846 Iran-linked sanctioned wallets moved almost only in Tether's USDT. Most came from Israel's list, and any penalty rests with a Treasury and Justice Department that Senator Blumenthal says have enforced nothing.
Perspective Coverage
8 publishersReality
OFAC designated A7, a Russia-linked payments network that reportedly settled over $86 billion in its first year, a transnational criminal organization. FinCEN's same-day proposal to bar transfers through A7's sub-agents gives banks and crypto firms a new screening job aimed at intermediaries.
Perspective Coverage
6 publishersReality
Leaked internal files from the Promsvyazbank-backed payments group describe roughly 100 front companies in four jurisdictions opening accounts at banks still on the network, with counterfeit invoices produced whenever compliance teams asked questions.
Reality
Leaked files put $6.9 billion of the Kremlin-linked A7 network's money through correspondent banks, while TRM counts $166 billion of A7-linked crypto volume. After the sanctions, the daily turnover of its ruble token fell 96%.
Reality
The joint research argues that constant reorganization under the GRIB and NIA is a control mechanism rather than administrative noise, and that treating Lazarus as one actor hides the revenue mandate driving most of the intrusions.
Reality
American strikes on five Revolutionary Guard tankers and Tehran's plan to stop unpermitted vessels have turned a current-quarter fuel line into a routing and compliance question, with Brent's seven-week high of $97 the part most plans already price.
Reality
Foreign Affairs puts the annual take near $1 trillion and says two-thirds of counterfeit seizures worldwide trace to China or Hong Kong. That is a counterparty problem, not a compliance checkbox.
Reality