Crypto's Worst Sleeper Cell: 7 Arrested for Turning Bitcoin Into Hitman Payroll 💼🔪

Police in the United Arab Emirates and Sweden have arrested seven people over an international money laundering network that moved about 70 million Swedish krona ($7.1 million) over ten months using cryptocurrencies, the Emirates News Agency reported, citing the UAE Ministry of Interior. The alleged leader, a Swedish national who had fled the country and was wanted under an Interpol Red Notice, was detained in the UAE, while six other suspected members were arrested simultaneously in Sweden. Legal proceedings have been opened against all seven, though the ministry has not named any of them.

Investigators traced the network's cryptocurrency transactions and analyzed digital evidence, which the ministry said "helped uncover financial links to other criminal activities, including organised crime and contract killings." The network handled cash proceeds from criminal activity and redirected them to other criminal entities, using cryptocurrencies "to transfer and move the value of those funds."

Sweden's Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer, of the Moderate Party, has called on the country's police, Tax Agency and Enforcement Authority to increase efforts to seize criminal profits, including in the form of cryptocurrency. Last November the government introduced forfeiture legislation permitting enforcement agencies to seize property "regardless of whether or not it can be proven that someone has committed an actual offence." In May, Swedish police reported that 23 bystanders had been killed and 30 wounded in gangland shootings over three years, with gangs using social media and encrypted apps to recruit paid killers, often teenagers below the age of criminal responsibility.

Brigadier Abdulaziz Al Ahmad, director general of the Federal Criminal Police at the UAE Ministry of Interior, said the country would "continue to track criminal networks, disrupt their sources of financing, and take legal action against anyone seeking to exploit the country's territory for criminal activities." Anders Wiberg, the Swedish Police Authority's police commissioner and head of its international division, called cooperation with the UAE "a key factor in achieving the successful outcome of this case." The arrests were made simultaneously in both countries after what the ministry described as extensive searches, investigations and close monitoring, with direct security coordination and intelligence sharing between the two governments.