Russian authorities have arrested more than 20 people in a major operation targeting illegal crypto exchange offices in Moscow’s financial district.

On Friday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), working alongside the Interior Ministry, said that officers raided nine unauthorized financial channels operating in Moscow City, according to a report by The Moscow Times.

The exchanges were reportedly used to process proceeds from telephone fraud schemes before converting the funds into cryptocurrency and moving them out of the country. The FSB claimed that the fraud originated from scam call centers based in Ukraine, which relied on gray-market exchange offices in Moscow to handle the cash.

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