The FBI seized the virtualine.net domain on October 27 with court approval as part of an international investigation involving German, Dutch, and British authorities. TRM Labs linked payments received by Bitcoin addresses associated with Virtualine to a Russian drug marketplace, ransomware groups, a large sextortion scheme, and a cryptocurrency mixer. The drug marketplace accounted for about 44% of direct inflows, compared with 5% for ransomware, 17% for sextortion, and 13% for the mixer. The Justice Department alleges that Virtualine advertised to criminals, accepted direct Bitcoin payments, and laundered customer funds, but no arrests or criminal charges were announced. No cryptocurrency seizure amount was disclosed, and the effect of the seizure on Virtualine’s operations and servers remains unknown.
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