American Gets 4 Years Jail for Stealing Bitcoins from Crypto Mixer Helix

A US court has sentenced Gary James Harmon, the brother of the crypto mixing service Helix operator, to four years and three months in prison, for stealing over 712 bitcoin, which were subject to forfeiture in a then-pending criminal case.

Theft from a Criminal Platform

The Bitcoins were linked to Helix, an online Bitcoin mixture run by Larry Harmon, Gary Harmon’s brother. Gary effectively transferred those Bitcoins, then valued at $4.8 million, using his brother’s credentials to a wallet he controlled to prevent law enforcement from forfeiting them. He then used two Bitcoin mixing services to hide the trail to these Bitcoins before using them to ‘finance large purchases and other expenditures’.

Larry Harmon was arrested in February 2020 for laundering over 350,000 Bitcoin, valued at over $300 million at the time of the transactions, for his customers. Most of these Bitcoins came from darknet marketplaces. Larry pled guilty to charges of money laundering conspiracy in August 2021.

At the time of Larry’s arrest, law enforcement seized various assets, including a cryptocurrency storage device containing illegal proceeds generated through the operation of Helix. It was that time when Gary stole a part of those Bitcoins by transferring them to another wallet.

Gary has now agreed to the forfeiture of cryptocurrencies and other properties derived from the fraudulently taken proceeds. This includes more than 647.41 Bitcoin, 2.14 Ethereum, and 17,404,400.64 Dogecoin, which are now valued at more than $20 million due to a surge in the market price.

Crackdown on Crypto Mixers

Crypto mixers are popular with criminals as they launder cryptocurrencies by eliminating the traces of their past transactions. Over the past few years, the authorities in the US and other countries hit on several crypto-mixing facilities operating illegally.

Last month, US and German authorities took down ChipMixer, a crypto-mixing service provider that has laundered $3 billion in cryptocurrencies since 2017. The 49-year-old Vietnamese operator of the platform is also facing charges of money laundering, operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and identity theft, which carries a maximum prison time of 40 years.

In 2019, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD), along with Europol and Luxembourg authorities, closed down the cryptocurrency mixing services of Bestmixer.io, which was one of the market leaders at the time. Meanwhile, the UK National Crime Agency proposed to regulate crypto mixers last year but did not share any development in the matter.