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A Santa Monica man charged with utilizing his cryptocurrency money alternate enterprise to launder thousands and thousands of {dollars} in alleged prison proceeds is predicted to plead responsible Wednesday to a federal cost.
Charles Randol, 33, has agreed to enter his plea to failure to take care of an efficient anti-money laundering program, against the law that carries a jail sentence of as much as 5 years, in response to the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace.
From October 2017 to July 2021, Randol owned and operated a virtual-currency cash providers enterprise referred to as Digital Coin Methods LLC. The corporate provided cryptocurrency money alternate providers for a fee, in response to his plea settlement.
Randol met nameless prospects in particular person to finish transactions, controlling and working a community of automated kiosks in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties that transformed money to Bitcoin and vice versa, and performed Bitcoin-for-cash transactions for unknown individuals who mailed massive quantities of U.S. foreign money to him, together with to submit workplace packing containers that he managed, papers filed in Los Angeles federal court docket present.
Randol admitted in his plea settlement to repeatedly violating federal regulation and his firm’s personal insurance policies by facilitating suspicious foreign money alternate transactions and taking steps to hide them from regulation enforcement.
For instance, Randol ceaselessly performed in-person money transactions that exceeded $10,000 with nameless or pseudo-anonymous people, together with folks whom Randol knew solely by such monikers as Puppet Shariff, White Jetta, Yogurt Monster and Hood.
In his plea settlement, Randol admitted to partaking in particular transactions from October 2020 to January 2021 wherein he exchanged a complete of $273,940 in money for Bitcoin with out requesting a reputation, proof of identification, Social Safety quantity or some other details about the client or the supply of the funds being exchanged — violations of the Financial institution Secrecy Act.
Randol additionally allowed criminals to construction and launder funds via his Bitcoin kiosks in malls, gasoline stations and comfort shops in Los Angeles, Glendale, Santa Clarita, Huntington Seaside, Santa Ana and Riverside, prosecutors allege.
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