How Arthur Budovsky ran the biggest money-laundering operation in history

As shadowy a character as the digital currency service he set up to launder money, Arthur Budovsky's demise has sent shockwaves through the cybercrime economy.

In the days following Arthur Budovsky's arrest at a Spanish airport last week, a US investigator observed that "if Al Capone was alive today", he'd probably have hidden his money on the virtual currency exchange, Liberty Reserve. Why not? The system, allegedly overseen by Budovsky from his base in Costa Rica, is estimated by US authorities to be "the biggest money-laundering operation in history", says The Sunday Times. They reckon that from 2006 until May this year, it processed 50 million transactions worth $6bn via a network of third-party 'exchangers' stretching from Latin America to Vietnam.

Layers of anonymity, and "a devil-may-care stance" on who used the service, made it "the cyberbank of choice" for criminals from identity thieves to drug dealers.

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