{"id":30865,"date":"2020-10-28T18:16:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T16:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=30865"},"modified":"2025-08-28T00:23:38","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T21:23:38","slug":"dutch-traders-sentenced-to-prison-for-laundering-e16-million-in-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/dutch-traders-sentenced-to-prison-for-laundering-e16-million-in-bitcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch traders sentenced to prison for laundering \u20ac16 million in Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple from Hilversum, Netherlands, were sentenced to prison on charges of money laundering through cryptocurrency. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/nltimes.nl\/2020\/10\/26\/hilversum-traders-get-25-years-money-laundering-eu25-million-bitcoin-seized\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NL Times<\/a>, a local publication.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>According to the prosecution, the defendants bought cryptocurrency from private individuals and companies without registering their activities.<\/p>\n<p>Meetings with clients took place in public places, with sellers not identified. Over two and a half years, the couple laundered more than \u20ac16 million.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cMost of the exchanged bitcoins are linked to the darknet,\u201d the prosecution said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Investigators confiscated from the couple mobile phones, computer equipment, jewelry, expensive watches, a car, 2,532 BTC (roughly $33.5 million) and \u20ac250,000 in cash.<\/p>\n<p>From the offices of the defendants&#8217; companies, authorities seized \u20ac138,000 and $40,000.<\/p>\n<p>A Rotterdam court sentenced the man to two years in prison and the woman to two-and-a-half years. Each company was fined \u20ac45,000.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities first signalled a ban on anonymous buying and selling of Bitcoin in January 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Later that year, the Ministry of Justice and Security proposed increasing the prison term for cryptocurrency fraud to six years.<\/p>\n<p>In spring 2020, to comply with the EU&#8217;s Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, Dutch cryptocurrency firms were required to register with the central bank by 18 May. Those that failed to comply ceased operations.<\/p>\n<p>Business leaders at the time argued that the requirement put them at a disadvantage relative to other financial sector players.<\/p>\n<p>A number of services announced their departure from the country: the cryptocurrency derivatives platform Deribit, the micropayments service Bottle Pay, the mining pool Simplecoin, the gaming platform Bitcoin Chopcoin, and the Bittr service.<\/p>\n<p>Follow ForkLog&#8217;s Telegram news: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/forklogfeed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">ForkLog Feed<\/a> \u2014 the full news feed, <a href=\"https:\/\/telegram.me\/forklog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">ForkLog<\/a> \u2014 the most important news and polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple from Hilversum, Netherlands, were sentenced to prison on charges of money laundering through cryptocurrency, according to NL Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1162,1154,718],"class_list":["post-30865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-crimes","tag-netherlands"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"11","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30867,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30865\/revisions\/30867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}