COIN BUREAU NEWSFLASH! – (24/08/22) Here are some of today’s m | Coin Bureau Insider
COIN BUREAU NEWSFLASH! – (24/08/22)
Here are some of today’s most important headlines:
Celsius Countersues Former Money Manager KeyFi, Accuses Them Of Deceit And Theft
On Tuesday, troubled crypto lending platform Celsius filed a countersuit in United States Bankruptcy Court against former money manager Keyfi Inc. and founder Jason Stone.
The lawsuit accuses the firm of mismanagement and fraud and alleges that KeyFi and founder Jason Stone stole assets worth millions of dollars from Celsius wallets by transferring them to wallets controlled by the defendants. It also states that these assets have since been laundered using sanctioned privacy tool Tornado Cash.
The lawsuit comes six weeks after Stone sued Celsius, accusing the firm of mismanagement and fraud. In an emailed statement to Bloomberg, Kyle Roche, an attorney for Stone, stated,
“As alleged by KeyFi in the complaint it filed last month, the compensation that KeyFi received (including in the form of NFTs) was expressly authorised by Celsius’s CEO Alexander Mashinsky. Celsius’s most recent filing is an attempt to rewrite history and use KeyFi and Mr. Stone as a scapegoat for their organisational incompetence.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-23/crypto-lender-celsius-accuses-money-manager-of-theft-deceit
DOJ Charges Miami-Based Trio with Defrauding Banks, Crypto Exchange In $4 Million Scam
According to a press release by the Department of Justice, three people residing in Miami have been arrested for their involvement in a plot to defraud banks and a cryptocurrency exchange for more than $4 million.
The plot involved using stolen identities to open accounts at a crypto exchange and then linking those accounts to several bank accounts which were funded by the defendants. The defendants then purchased crypto on those accounts for nearly $4 million, which was then moved to an external wallet. Once this step was executed, the defendants then filed false reports claiming the crypto purchases were unauthorised, prompting the bank to reverse those transactions, effectively reimbursing the defendants.
The defendants have now been charged with a variety of offences including wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/miami-trio-duped-banks-crypto-exchange-in-4-million-scam-11661287138
Rep. Emmer Demands an Explanation of OFAC’s Tornado Cash Sanction from Sec. Yellen
On Tuesday, US Congressman Tom Emmer wrote a four-page letter containing a series of questions posed to Janet Yellen, the secretary of the Treasury, that sought clarification on the recent sanctions imposed on crypto privacy tool Tornado Cash and its "divergence from previous OFAC precedent."
The letter also pointed out a distinction made by the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on anonymising services and anonymising software. One of the questions posed by Emmer in the letter, is as follows,
“Given that the Tornado Cash back-end will operate unchanged […] as long as the Ethereum network continues to operate, who or what entity did OFAC believe was reasonably responsible for imposing controls on the Tornado Cash blockchain contracts?”
https://cointelegraph.com/news/rep-emmer-demands-an-explanation-of-ofac-s-tornado-cash-sanction-from-sec-yellen
NFT Exchange SudoRare Suffers $800,000 ‘Rug Pull’ Six Hours After Launch
SudoRare, a decentralised NFT exchange and fork of popular NFT exchanges LooksRare and SudoSwap, has gone offline and disappeared with tokens worth $800,000 in what seems to be an apparent ‘rug pull’ scam. The rug pull occurred just six hours after the platform launched.
Data from blockchain investigation firm PeckShield shows that the funds have already been sent to three different wallets, one of which has been identified as belonging to a user of crypto exchange Kraken.
https://www.theblock.co/post/164970/nft-exchange-sudorare-suffers-800000-rug-pull-six-hours-after-launch
DAO Tooling Startup Mural, Founded by Palantir Alums, Raises $5.6M in Seed Round
