Tech
Technology has changed money laundering
ON JUNE 2 Bill Guan, the chief financial officer of Epochal times, a right-wing newspaper, was arrested. New York prosecutors accused him of laundering $67 million by allegedly purchasing prepaid debit cards using cryptocurrency. (Mr. Guan has pleaded not guilty.) Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, estimates that $22.2 billion in illicit funds were laundered globally using cryptocurrencies in 2023. Despite Western sanctions, Iran, Korea North and Hamas, a terrorist group, launder all the funds with cryptocurrency.
As journalist Geoff White makes clear in a gripping new book, money laundering may seem bloodless and abstruse, but it will only become more relevant and widespread. That’s because technology is making this type of crime easier and much harder to detect.