Bitcoin and ether funded the bulk of the operation, according to the complaint against the man filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Customers allegedly sent the cryptocurrencies as payment for videos or could upload their own. Their video submissions had to follow “specific rules,” though. As detailed extensively in the complaint, the videos had to be explicitly “obscene.”
“The types of crimes described in this indictment are the most disgusting I’ve encountered in 30 years of law enforcement,” said Don Fort, Chief of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation team (IRS-CI), in a press release. “It is a special kind of evil to prey on and profit from the pain of others.”
It also led investigators straight to DarkScandals, the complaint said. “A subsequent review of a Washington, D.C.-based Welcome to Video customer’s virtual currency records lead to the discovery of the DarkScandals Sites.”
The case serves as another reminder that cryptocurrencies are a double-edged sword for criminals. On the one hand, transactions cannot be blocked by a regulated third party like a bank or payment processor; on the other hand, they leave a trail of crumbs for investigators that is difficult to obscure.
This content was originally published here.
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