The founder, administrator, and primary operator of a pair of virtual currency platforms was assessed a $60 million civil penalty by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on Monday for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and its implementing of anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.
Larry Dean Harmon was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this year under allegations of money laundering at his company Helix, which he operated from 2014-17. Helix functioned as a bitcoin “mixer,” which allows customers to pay to send bitcoin in a manner that conceals the source of the owner of the virtual currency. Another term used to describe such platforms is “tumblers.”
