From Dubai to Toronto, inside the crypto-to-cash storefronts fueling money laundering’s new frontier
We had just pulled into the bus station in Lviv, Ukraine, when the city’s air-raid sirens began to wail. I’d taken an eight-hour trip from Kyiv with Richard Sanders, a U.S. Army veteran who was crisscrossing the war-torn country to collect digital intelligence. Sanders is a volunteer for Ukraine’s national police force, which has become increasingly concerned about Russian operatives being paid in cryptocurrency.
Sanders grabbed his camouflaged luggage, which contained a hidden camera disguised as a car key, a wand to scan for eavesdropping devices in his hotel room, and an array of tourniquets in case of an airstrike. He also carried a stack of cash and a digital wallet on his iPhone loaded with cryptocurrency.
My…
