An Ohio man named Larry Dean Harmon will serve three years in jail and forfeit greater than $400 million value of cryptocurrency and different belongings, the Division of Justice introduced Friday. Harmon was indicted in 2020 on cash laundering conspiracy expenses associated to Helix, a darkweb cryptocurrency “mixer” service he ran.
Also called crypto “turbling,” providers like Helix are designed to cover cryptocurrency transactions — typically for unlawful medicine — and the id of the individuals concerned. From 2014 to 2017, Harmon processed greater than 350,000 Bitcoins (about $311 million on the time) in such transactions, in keeping with the DOJ announcement.
Harmon, who pleaded responsible to conspiracy to commit cash laundering in August 2021, will probably be on the hook for 3 years of supervised launch after serving his jail time period. He additionally obtained a forfeiture judgment within the quantity of $311,145,854.
He confronted a potential 20-year jail sentence, however the decide within the case gave him a lighter sentence after serving to with a number of different investigations, as The Wall Avenue Journal notes. This apparently included his testimony within the trial of Roman Sterlingov, who ran one other crypto mixer referred to as Bitcoin Fog.