The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed charges against two men from Florida for allegedly operating an unlicensed bitcoin exchange. This comes weeks after the state rolled out its BitLicense framework covering the digital currency industry and requiring bitcoin companies to secure licenses for their services and products.
The filing indicated that Anthony R. Murgio and Yuri Lebedev had been running an underground bitcoin exchange online since 2013. Their service, which is called Coin.mx, had apparently been in violation of the Fed’s anti-money laundering regulation.
Underground Bitcoin Exchange Operations
Through Coin.mx, Murgio, Lebedev, and their co-conspirators enabled their customers to exchange cash for bitcoins, charging a fee for their service. Upon investigation, the authorities saw that this was conducted through a phony front-company and a federal credit union that Murgio allegedly acquired for the purpose of carrying on with the scheme.
With that, Murgio and Lebedev may have engaged in money transmittance activity for those guilty of criminal activity. After all, bitcoin has still been clouded with a negative reputation for being used as the currency of choice for illegal dealings, as the cryptocurrency’s transactions are anonymous and cannot be traced.
In addition, perpetrators of online attacks or malware encryption have typically been demanding bitcoin as ransom. For instance, TorrentLocker in the UK has been known to require bitcoin payments before unlocking files in computers they’ve encrypted with ransomware. Authorities believe that transactions similar to these have been conducted through unlicensed bitcoin exchanges like Coin.mx.
The filing also indicated that between approximately October 2013 and January 2015, Coin.mx exchanged at least $1.8 million for bitcoins on behalf of tens of thousands of customers. Their operations are believed to have spanned Cyprus, Hong Kong, and Eastern Europe.
With that, Murgio and Lebedev are charged each with one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, each of which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
kinetiktrader 
So what a man creates a business that uses Bitcoin for people that want to use it….
What is the big deal? Money laundering can be done with a pastry business in usd’s.
The fact that this article is sensational in its creation shows the lack of knowledge and understanding.
New York wants 5k a year for Bitcoin business something that is akin to legal mafia.
Bitcoin is traceable to some extent and if these people where doing highly ilegal activity what are the criminal/ terrorists that they served?
They served people in other countries cause “hello” bitcoin is a world currency.
“Fear tactics are all sheep ever learn to become, follow, agree and then graduate as black sheep”
If this journal is to support bitcoin it should look at the options why these men did not make a real exchange. What’s the difference between them coinbase? Why are outdated laws and greedy lawmakers so adement to Bitcoin in New York and what does the rest of the countries legal standpoint in operating an exchange? How can bitcoin work to make the law a friend? Etc