Email from alleged crypto-launderer
(Bloomberg) — As the government’s investigation into Binance Holdings Ltd. and other top crypto players are stepping up, a company called ChipMixer is in the crosshairs of US and European law enforcement. They describe it as a mechanism for laundering money, and the man who is supposed to be behind the company has gone dark.
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As it happens, I exchanged emails with someone involved a few years ago, and the conversation shows the flimsy defense ChipMixer used to assert its legitimacy.
On March 15, US and European authorities announced the takedown of ChipMixer, a cryptocurrency “mixing platform” that mixed cryptoassets and obscured traces of ownership. The US Department of Justice said the service was run by 49-year-old Vietnamese developer Minh Quốc Nguyễn and was used by hackers, ransomware groups and other bad actors to launder billions of dollars in illegal proceeds between 2017 and 2023.
ChipMixer was also the key to an unusual crime spree that began in 2017, in which a former Microsoft Corp. employee stole massive amounts of Xbox gift cards and sold them for Bitcoin. U.S. prosecutors said in a subsequent trial that Bitcoin was funneled through ChipMixer, which they described as a money-laundering scheme designed to “obliterate the blockchain trail.”
When I contacted the site while covering the gift card case, an unnamed representative was adamant that the service was just a privacy tool. “Privacy is not a crime,” this person wrote in 2021.
In retrospect, the answers are fascinating, not only because ChipMixer’s website has since been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but also because they were likely written by Nguyễn himself. According to the US criminal complaint, ChipMixer’s Proton email account, with which the reply replied to me, had links to two of Nguyễn’s aliases, James Hall and Max Archdall, which he allegedly used to conduct business.
No government agencies or reporters have apparently been able to reach Nguyễn. A Justice Department spokesperson said he is not yet in custody, and ChipMixer did not respond to my recent follow-up emails.
The 2021 ChipMixer representative’s response to me, whether from Nguyễn or a staff member, gives insight into how he might defend the service in court if caught. (It’s unclear if there were multiple people involved, although the rep wrote in the plural “we,” as in: “We don’t do special favors for criminals.”)
The representative’s main argument was that crypto mixers, who are essentially accused of exchanging dirty crypto for clean crypto, were only intended to provide legitimate financial confidentiality. “Chipmixer takes any deposit and returns small ‘chips,'” the rep said.
Writing in a style that suggests English is not this person’s first language, the representative said a main tool for ChipMixer was to mask how much money someone has in their crypto wallet. “Imagine paying for coffee while your credit cards scream that you have enough money to buy a cheap car,” the representative continued. “There is nothing ‘dirty’ or ‘clean’ here.”
In any case, the representative said, there was no way for ChipMixer to identify the people behind the transactions. The person also said that ChipMixer only made money through “donations”. This isn’t exactly true: According to the complaint, during the FBI’s investigation, ChipMixer charged an undercover agent a 2.44% fee to mix crypto, which it referred to as a “donation” during the process.
The service was certainly embraced by criminals to cover their tracks, as was the case with Xbox thieves and even North Korean hackers, as the FBI has since alleged. But the ChipMixer representative said it was no different than any platform that could be abused.
“Dark web criminals use Google browser to sell drugs and hackers use Facebook Whatsapp to send ransom,” this person wrote. “Chipmixer is used by many individuals, and some may be bad people.”
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