In its press release dated September 24, the Brazilian Federal Police noted that it had dismantled a money laundering operation with the help of TRM Labs and Binance. The action by PF in collaboration with the blockchain Intelligence firm and the cryptocurrency exchange was named ‘Operation Lusocoin’, and $4.3 million worth of USDT has been seized.
As per the press release, the crackdown firm was having its leadership somewhere in Dubai and is accused of moving $9.3 billion from illegal activities, including drug trafficking.
Part of the operation, the authorities have frozen bank accounts of 65 individuals and legal entities. Also, half a dozen vehicles and properties have been seized, and around 30 crypto wallets and assets held on exchange were frozen.
Bad actors leveraged the pandemic to expand operations
The investigation report notes that the group identified behind this money laundering worked with companies based in Pelotas at the time during the pandemic and expanded its structure with time to Florianopolis.
Some groups that benefited from the money laundering include drug traffickers, smugglers, and embezzlers with terror funding. The main group is supposed to have already moved R$50 billion.
Over time, money laundering via crypto has peaked with Bitcoin and USDT becoming the primary cryptocurrencies to be used to launder the illicit funds.
A quick update on the crypto market
As of this writing, the crypto market has a capitalization of $3.75 trillion, with a decline of 2.20% at the same time, the trading volume is $232.81 billion. The crypto fear and greed index is moving downwards, with now 32, indicating fear.
Bitcoin lost 2% of its price in the last 24 hours, reaching $109,640, and lost 6.3% in a week, yet the press time market cap is $2.18 trillion, losing 2.08% and trading volume is $73.78 billion, surging 43.28%.
As per CoinMarketCap, Ethereum lost 2.03% of its price intraday and 13.15% in a week, reaching $3,942, and the market capitalization is $475 billion, with trading volume of $62.57 billion.
BNB fell to $949 with a loss of 4.41% intraday, earlier this week, it was seen trading above $1020 and has established an all-time high on September 21, 2025, of $1,080.
The intraday losers list has been ruled by Story, which fell by 24% followed by MYX Finance, Aster, Avalanche, Zcash, Pudgy Penguins, Flare, NEAR protocol, and SPX6900.
On the other hand, the gainers are Plasma, which grew by 50.86% reaching $1.25, followed by Mantle, Cronos, Kaspa, OKB, Monera, and Menecore.
