Investigators found that drug traffickers, Southeast Asian fraud gangs and North Korean hackers frequently used major crypto platforms to discreetly move their funds.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) Coin Laundry investigation found that illicit funds were funneled through major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, OKX, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit and Kucoin, as part of a global underground economy profiting from the proceeds of crime.
The 10-month cross-border project, carried out with 37 media partners in 35 countries, gathered hundreds of wallet addresses linked to scams, thefts, sanctions violations and other illicit activities, and traced tens of thousands of transactions across public blockchains.
Criminal money on the world’s largest stock exchanges
The investigation found that money launderers working for drug traffickers, Southeast Asian fraud rings and North Korean hacking groups routinely used major exchanges to move their funds.
A significant discovery revealed that Huione Group, a Cambodian financial institution designated by U.S. authorities as a “primary money laundering concern,” sent approximately $1 million worth of USDT per day to accounts at Binance as recently as July 2025. This contributed to more than $408 million in total transfers from July 2024 to July 2025.
These flows continued even though Binance operated under two court-appointed monitors as part of its November 2023 plea deal for violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws, which required the company to pay $4.3 billion. The investigation also found that more than $226 million was introduced into OKX customer accounts from Huione in the five months after OKX pleaded guilty in the United States in February 2025 to operating an unlicensed money transmitter and agreed to pay more than $504 million in penalties.
According to the ICIJ, these transfers persisted despite Huione’s designation in May as a major money laundering problem. Journalists also examined how so-called cash registers and courier services operating in cities including Hong Kong, Toronto, London and Istanbul allow users to anonymously cash out large sums of cryptocurrency outside of regulatory oversight, forming another channel through which illicit proceeds reach or leave exchanges.
The report further shows how victims of scams in 12 countries saw their stolen funds flow through these same major platforms. To highlight the scale of criminal activity using crypto infrastructure, the investigation detailed the alleged pyramid and Ponzi scheme run by Vladimir Okhotnikov, who was accused of stealing at least $340 million from investors between 2020 and 2022 through a manipulated crypto investment platform and continuing to run similar schemes from Dubai.
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Anonymous Wallets and Swappers
Although blockchain records provide transparency, ICIJ has reported that criminals are using anonymous wallets and tools such as “swappers” to complicate tracing, creating major tracing problems for exchange compliance teams. More than a dozen former compliance officers at companies including Binance and OKX told ICIJ that they are struggling to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated laundering techniques.
Regulators around the world have imposed at least $5.8 billion in fines and penalties on crypto exchanges, but oversight remains fragmented, even as U.S. authorities estimate $9.3 billion in crypto-related losses in 2024.
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