Rent a car, launder crypto: Italian police bust $76M mafia scheme

Italian police have busted a mafia-linked crypto laundering ring that moved €68 million ($76 million) out of the country under the guise of a Milan-based car rental company.

According to Il Sole 24 Ore, the operation, carried out by the Guardia di Finanza and Monza Brianza, has seen 30 individuals arrested and stretches across Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. 

The scheme allegedly took funds from drug trafficking, crypto scams, fraudulent invoices, and general bank accounts, combined them, and moved them into European banks. 

Crypto exchanges were then used to convert the funds sending them onto wallets controlled by the suspects.

A Milan-based car rental run by suspects with ties to the Ndrangheta and Camorra mafia groups was reportedly central to the plot. These suspects are alleged to have used their profits to support mafia members in prison.   

Members of one of Italy’s youngest mafia groups, the so-caled “Fourth Mafia,” were also reportedly involved.  

Various shell companies used €110 million ($123 million) worth of false invoices, generated for businesses that never involved contracted work, to launder the funds before they were converted into crypto. 

Read more: Europol raids $24 million ‘mafia crypto bank’

The scheme attracted crypto scammers, drug traffickers, and tax evaders looking to launder their funds, and police are looking to make seizures totaling €21 million ($23.5 million).

Two individuals, including a Milan magistrates office driver, and a Milan-based lawyer, have also been arrested.

Just last week, Bank of America was fined $1.2 billion for failing to detect $5 billion worth of suspicious transactions that include funds linked to Chinese money laundering networks. 

American Express was also fined $350 million this month for allegedly processing billions of dollars in trade-based money laundering.

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