US Man Pleads Guilty to Running $25 Million Bitcoin Laundering Scheme

A Los Angeles man has pleaded guilty to running a $25 million Bitcoin (BTC) money laundering scheme and selling methamphetamine.

Possible life sentence

News outlet U.S. News reported on Aug. 23 that Kunal Kalra has pleaded guilty to charges including money laundering and distributing methamphetamines. The 25-year-old is facing life in prison.

The authorities say that, from 2015 to 2017, Kalra exchanged BTC and dollars, ran a Bitcoin ATM, and admitted to making deals with drug dealers and other criminals.

Sold meth to an undercover agent

Kalra also sold two pounds of meth to an undercover law enforcement agent. According to the report, he also faces money laundering charges in Texas, which were filed earlier this month.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, the United States Department of the Treasury has added multiple cryptocurrency addresses to its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, also known as the Kingpin Act.

In July, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the authority will work to prevent Bitcoin from becoming an “equivalent of Swiss-numbered bank accounts.” According to Mnuchin, the government combats “bad actors in the U.S. dollar every day to protect the U.S. financial system.”