Russian intelligence officers accused of meddling in the 2016 presidential elections in the US have used bitcoin to finance their campaign, cover the tracks and obscure their identities, a new federal indictment suggests. You can check the details in today’s edition of Bitcoin in Brief. Also in the daily, billionaire Steven Cohen invests in crypto hedge fund, mysterious expert bets that 1 BTC will cost more than the Berkshire Hathaway’s share in five years, and a leading horse-betting platform now accepts BTC and BCH.
Russian Agents Used Bitcoin & Mined Cryptocurrency
Last Friday, a federal indictment announced by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein turned another page in the story of the alleged Russian meddling in the last US presidential election, and it features cryptocurrency. According to the document, which was released just before a major summit between Trump and Putin in Helsinki next week, Russian agents used cryptos like bitcoin in their campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 vote.
Authorities in Washington claim that hackers working for the Russian foreign military intelligence paid in crypto for servers in the US and Malaysia, website domains, and virtual private networks (VPNs) used to release information stolen from the Democratic camp and to obscure their identities and cover their tracks. They also laundered more than $95,000 through bitcoin.
The 12 GRU officers indicted by the United States special counsel Robert Mueller are said to have acquired bitcoin (BTC) in different ways, including through peer-to-peer crypto trading platforms, using other digital coins and prepaid credit cards as well. US investigators claim the Russians even mined their own cryptocurrency.
The indictment, the first to level criminal charges against Russian officials pertaining to the alleged election interference, suggests that crypto funds were used to lease servers in two US states, Illinois and Arizona, where the hacked information was stored, and pay a Romanian company through a US-based processor to set up a website used to spread it.
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