Connect with us

Published

on

US Treasury wants to cut off Huione over ties to crypto crime

The US Treasury Department wants to block the Cambodia-based Huione Group from accessing the US banking system, accusing it of helping North Korea’s state-backed Lazarus Group to launder its crypto.

The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposed on May 1 to prohibit US financial institutions from opening or maintaining correspondent or payable-through accounts for or on behalf of the Huione Group.

Huione Group has established itself as the “marketplace of choice for malicious cyber actors” like the Lazarus Group, who have “stolen billions of dollars from everyday Americans,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a May 1 statement.

“Today’s proposed action will sever Huione Group’s access to correspondent banking, degrading these groups’ ability to launder their ill-gotten gains.”

Huione Group has set up a network of businesses, which includes payment service platform Huione Pay PLC, the crypto exchange Huione Crypto, and Haowang Guarantee, an online marketplace offering illicit goods and services.

Although the conglomerate doesn’t have correspondent accounts with US financial institutions, it has accounts with foreign firms with US correspondent accounts, FinCEN noted in its rulemaking submission.

The proposed rule is subject to a 30-day public comment period before it can take effect.

US Treasury wants to cut off Huione over ties to crypto crime
Source: Chainalysis

Huione expanded into sophisticated cybercrime network

FinCEN claimed that Huione Group has laundered at least $4 billion worth of illicit proceeds between August 2021 and January 2025, including more than $36 million from crypto pig butchering scams.

At least $37 million worth of the crypto laundered has been linked to North Korea’s “cyber heists,” the Treasury said.

Haowang Guarantee has made Huione Group a “one stop shop” for criminals to launder crypto obtained through illicit activities, and ultimately convert it to fiat currency, the Treasury said.

Related: North Korean crypto attacks rising in sophistication, actors — Paradigm

The conglomerate has also created a US dollar-pegged stablecoin, the US Dollar Huione (USDH), which FinCEN said cannot be frozen and helps to carry out money laundering activities.

The National Bank of Cambodia has stated that payment firms aren’t allowed to deal or trade digital assets in the country and had revoked the company’s local banking license in March.

Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

Continue Reading

Politics

ZKPs can prove I’m old enough without telling you my age

Published

on

By

<div>ZKPs can prove I'm old enough without telling you my age</div>

<div>ZKPs can prove I'm old enough without telling you my age</div>

Opinion by: Andre Omietanski, General Counsel, and Amal Ibraymi, Legal Counsel at Aztec Labs

What if you could prove you’re over 18, without revealing your birthday, name, or anything else at all? Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) make this hypothetical a reality and solve one of the key challenges online: verifying age without sacrificing privacy. 

The need for better age verification today

We’re witnessing an uptick in laws being proposed restricting minors’ access to social media and the internet, including in Australia, Florida, and China. To protect minors from inappropriate adult content, platform owners and governments often walk a tightrope between inaction and overreach. 

For example, the state of Louisiana in the US recently enacted a law meant to block minors from viewing porn. Sites required users to upload an ID before viewing content. The Free Speech Coalition challenged the law as unconstitutional, making the case that it infringed on First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit was eventually dismissed on procedural grounds. The reaction, however, highlights the dilemma facing policymakers and platforms: how to block minors without violating adults’ rights or creating new privacy risks.

Traditional age verification fails

Current age verification tools are either ineffective or invasive. Self-declaration is meaningless, since users can simply lie about their age. ID-based verification is overly invasive. No one should be required to upload their most sensitive documents, putting themselves at risk of data breaches and identity theft. 

Biometric solutions like fingerprints and face scans are convenient for users but raise important ethical, privacy, and security concerns. Biometric systems are not always accurate and may generate false positives and negatives. The irreversible nature of the data, which can’t be changed like a regular password can, is also less than ideal. 

Other methods, like behavioral tracking and AI-driven verification of browser patterns, are also problematic, using machine learning to analyze user interactions and identify patterns and anomalies, raising concerns of a surveillance culture.

ZKPs as the privacy-preserving solution

Zero-knowledge proofs present a compelling solution. Like a government ID provider, a trusted entity verifies the user’s age and generates a cryptographic proof confirming they are over the required age.

Websites only need to check the proof, not the excess personal data, ensuring privacy while keeping minors at the gates. No centralized data storage is required, alleviating the burden on platforms such as Google, Meta, and WhatsApp and eliminating the risk of data breaches. 

Recent: How zero-knowledge proofs can make AI fairer

Adopting and enforcing ZKPs at scale

ZKPs aren’t a silver bullet. They can be complex to implement. The notion of “don’t trust, verify,” proven by indisputable mathematics, may cause some regulatory skepticism. Policymakers may hesitate to trust cryptographic proofs over visible ID verification. 

There are occasions when companies may need to disclose personal information to authorities, such as during an investigation into financial crimes or government inquiries. This would challenge ZKPs, whose very intention is for platforms not to hold this data in the first place.

ZKPs also struggle with scalability and performance, being somewhat computationally intensive and tricky to program. Efficient implementation techniques are being explored, and breakthroughs, such as the Noir programming language, are making ZKPs more accessible to developers, driving the adoption of secure, privacy-first solutions. 

A safer, smarter future for age verification

Google’s move to adopt ZKPs for age verification is a promising signal that mainstream platforms are beginning to embrace privacy-preserving technologies. But to fully realize the potential of ZKPs, we need more than isolated solutions locked into proprietary ecosystems. 

Crypto-native wallets can go further. Open-source and permissionless blockchain-based systems offer interoperability, composability, and programmable identity. With a single proof, users can access a range of services across the open web — no need to start from scratch every time, or trust a single provider (Google) with their credentials.

ZKPs flip the script on online identity — proving what matters, without exposing anything else. They protect user privacy, help platforms stay compliant, and block minors from restricted content, all without creating new honeypots of sensitive data.

Google’s adoption of ZKPs shows mainstream momentum is building. But to truly transform digital identity, we must embrace crypto-native, decentralized systems that give users control over what they share and who they are online.

In an era defined by surveillance, ZKPs offer a better path forward — one that’s secure, private, and built for the future.

Opinion by: Andre Omietanski, General Counsel, and Amal Ibraymi, Legal Counsel at Aztec Labs.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Continue Reading

Politics

Gisele Pelicot’s daughter says chemical castration ‘could be part of the solution’ for sex offenders

Published

on

By

Gisele Pelicot's daughter says chemical castration 'could be part of the solution' for sex offenders

The daughter of Gisele Pelicot has suggested chemical castration could be “one part of the solution” when there is “nothing else you can do” for sex offenders – like her father.

Caroline Darian’s father Dominique Pelicot admitted repeatedly drugging and raping his wife Gisele between 2011 and 2020, and inviting dozens of other men to their home in southern France to do the same.

Gisele decided to waive her right to anonymity to hold the trial of her husband and 50 other men in public, saying: “It is not for us to be ashamed, but for those men.”

Politics latest: Farage says ‘yes’ he can be PM

Speaking to Ali Fortescue on The Politics Hub, Ms Darian said the UK government’s plans to consider mandatory chemical castration could be “one part of the solution” for men like her father.

Gisele Pelicot. Pic: Reuters
Image:
Gisele Pelicot. Pic: Reuters

She said: “It’s probably one part of the solution because you know when you’re at that level of crime, that level of criminal, there is nothing else you can do.”

Asked if she believed “men like your father” could be rehabilitated, Ms Darian said “no” and “never”.

For ten years, Pelicot repeatedly sedated his wife and invited strangers to abuse her after advertising sex with her on a French swinging website.

Some denied the rape charges, claiming they believed Gisele had agreed to be drugged and was a willing participant in a sex game between the couple.

But all the men charged were found guilty of at least one offence, with nearly all convicted of rape, after a trial that shocked France and made headlines around the world.

The defendants were sentenced to a total of more than 400 years, with Pelicot being sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Follow The World
Follow The World

Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday

Tap to follow

Pelicot also took photos of his daughter Caroline semi-naked while she was asleep.

Ms Darian is pressing charges against her father, having accused him of drugging and raping her. Pelicot has denied this.

Speaking to French media, Beatrice Zavarro, Pelicot’s lawyer, said Ms Darian’s decision to press charges was “unsurprising”.

She added that prosecutors had said there were insufficient “objective elements” to accuse Pelicot of raping and using chemical submission on Ms Darian.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said last week that she will pursue “a nationwide rollout” of a scheme being piloted in southwest England to use medication to suppress the sexual drive of sex offenders.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

‘It’s a moment that will remain etched in my memory forever,’ David tells Sky News’ Siobhan Robbins.

Read more:
How Gisele Pelicot went from victim to feminist hero
Inside the depraved mind of ‘career criminal’ Dominique

It came after an independent review, led by the former justice secretary David Gauke, was commissioned by the government amid an overcrowding crisis in prisons in England and Wales.

The review recommended that chemical castration “may assist in management of suitable sex offenders both in prison and in the community”.

Ms Mahmood said she is “exploring whether mandating the approach is possible”. The trial is currently voluntary.

Continue Reading

Politics

Russian national arrested in South Korea for attempted crypto robbery

Published

on

By

Russian national arrested in South Korea for attempted crypto robbery

Russian national arrested in South Korea for attempted crypto robbery

South Korean authorities have arrested one of three Russian nationals accused of an attempted robbery during a fake crypto deal in Seoul. The suspects allegedly lured Korean investors to a hotel, where they tried to steal 1 billion won (approximately $730,000) in cash.

The Gangseo Police Precinct in Seoul detained a man in his 20s in Busan on May 27, according to a report by local news outlet JoongAng Daily. The suspect faces charges of assault and attempted robbery. The other two suspects reportedly fled South Korea shortly after the incident.

According to investigators, the robbery attempt occurred on May 21 at a hotel in Seoul’s Gangseo District. The suspects posed as participants in a peer-to-peer crypto transaction and invited 10 Korean men to the hotel.

Two were called to the room while the others waited in the lobby. Inside the room, the suspects — wearing protective vests — ambushed the victims with a replica handgun and a telescopic baton, tying their hands with cable ties.

Related: Another suspect to surrender in NYC crypto torture case: Reports

Police seize weapons, launch global manhunt

Per the report, one of the victims managed to escape and raise the alarm, prompting the suspects to flee without the cash. Police responded to an emergency call and found one man bleeding in the lobby.

Officers discovered a cache of equipment in the suspects’ hotel room, including a replica firearm, batons, vests and a money counter. Police suspect the robbery had been carefully planned.

A request to prevent the suspects from leaving the country was filed the next morning, but two had already departed. “We have requested assistance from Interpol to track down the suspects who fled overseas,” a police official reportedly said.

Authorities are now questioning the detained suspect and preparing to seek a pretrial detention warrant.

Related: Crypto investor loses $2.6M in stablecoins in double phishing scam

Rise in crypto crime incidents

The incident comes amid a recent uptick in crypto-related violent crimes, including kidnapping and ransom cases.

A Manhattan crypto investor faces serious charges after allegedly kidnapping and torturing an Italian man in a bid to extract access to digital assets.

Russian national arrested in South Korea for attempted crypto robbery
Source: Mario Nawfal

On May 13, the family of Pierre Noizat, the co-founder and CEO of French crypto exchange Paymium, was targeted in an attempted kidnapping.

In response, executives and investors in the crypto industry are increasingly seeking personal security services. On May 18, private firm Infinite Risks International reported a rise in requests for bodyguards and protection contracts from high-profile figures in the crypto space.

Magazine: TradFi is building Ethereum L2s to tokenize trillions in RWAs: Inside story

Continue Reading

Trending