After formerly being jailed for an association with terrorist information, Khuram Iqbal has been sentenced to jail in the UK for trading cryptocurrency like Bitcoin on the dark web.
According to the BBC, Khuram Iqbal, a 29-year-old British citizen, has been jailed for 16 months for trading cryptocurrencies on a dark web site called Silk Road.
In the past, Iqbal has been in jail. In 2014, he was jailed for distributing terrorist publications and having terrorist information, like al-Inspire Qaeda’s magazine, which he had.
A year after he was released on bail in May 2015, he was back in jail. He was jailed for three years and three months at the time.
When he didn’t tell police about two cryptocurrency accounts that he owned for 10 years, he was arrested again. He agreed to breaking the law four times from July to August 2019.
Iqbal’s connections to crypto crimes
As of March 20, 2021, Iqbal had deposited almost £12,000 ($15,900) into his account. He made 392 transactions over that time.
It was January 2020, and Iqbal made three Bitcoin transactions on a dark web site that sold stolen credit card numbers. The court heard that Iqbal used an account at the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to buy and sell cryptocurrency. Coinbase is said to have sent out a report about suspicious activity.
Iqbal told police that he did trade in cryptocurrencies, but he said he didn’t use the dark web. His cell phone, which was taken when he was arrested, had apps that allowed him to access the dark web.
As the prosecutor said: “The nature of cryptocurrency is that it can’t be traced, so the truth is he was able to run two email accounts and two cryptocurrency accounts without police noticing.”
This story shows that, of course, cryptocurrencies can be traced, as it shows. Privacy coins aren’t the same as traditional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which are pseudonymous.
Transactions between wallets are public, but wallet addresses aren’t. Chainalysis, for example, is a company that makes money by connecting wallet addresses to criminals and tracing their crypto transactions. This is true.
Michael Morell, the former head of the CIA, said that “blockchain technology is a powerful but underused forensic tool for governments to use to find illegal activity and bring criminals to justice.”
It also spent $670,000 last month to teach its employees about the money laundering and terrorist financing risks that the crypto industry poses.
