Russia Paying Teenage and Untrained Spies Using Bitcoin: Report

Russian intelligence services used Bitcoin to pay teenage and uneducated spies, according to a Reuters An investigation conducted in partnership with Blockchain analytical firms Global Ledger and Recoversis.

AND report Reuters The recent case of Laken Pavan, a Canadian citizen who was sentenced to 20 months in Polish prison in December after recognizing the guilt of assistance to the Russian intelligence service.

The Russian Federal Safety Service (FSB) recruited Pavan at the end of April 2024, after Canadian-Koji was 17 years old in Donjeck to volunteer for the crisp interbrigades, after being radicalized on the network during 2023.

In Donjeck, FSB agents detained Pavana for several days, using threats to hire him as a spy and then assigned him a manager, known only as an ‘elephant’ (Russian for ‘Elephant’).

FSB agents told Pavan that he would travel to various places in Europe, including Ukraine, to collect intelligence, which would be divided with an elephant.

Pavan traveled to Istanbul from Donjek and then to Copenhagen, where he received Bitcoin worth just over $ 500 from the elephant.

On May 2, the day after receiving Bitcoin payments, Pavan traveled to Warsaw, where he surrendered to the Polish authorities.

Here, Pavana -s’s short life like a Russian spy, but Global Ledger and Recowersis managed to keep track of $ 500 Bitcoin sent to the Elephant in two intermediary BTC wallets, which in turn received hundreds of thousands of dollars in the BTC -us address created in June 2022.

The investigation also revealed that transfers to and from the wallet occurred during working hours in Moscow, while the analysis revealed that the largest wallet had processed a BTC worth $ 600 million.

The largest wallet also sent funds Santioned Russian Garandex exchangeWhile Global Ledger reported that it seems to be funded by the “main mining pool and custody service”.

Although neither the global book nor Recoversis could definitely identify the ownership of a large wallet (or two intermediary wallets), they both tilted the conclusion that it was associated with the FSB.

“The transactions from the FSB -related wallets have followed the structured wash pattern, which included the splitting of the funds, mixing with larger amounts and directing through unrelated deposits for deposits,” Global Ledger explained in her report for Reuters.

Russian crypto spy network

While Laken Pavan is just one case, recoversis says Decipher that he was watching Russian intelligence and security agencies “constantly fund” agents using Crypto currency.

“This method has been discovered on several occasions; for example, in 2023, it was found that a group of young Belarus and Ukrainians, based in Poland, funded Gru in Kripto currency,” said Recoversis CEO Marcin Zarakowski.

According to Zarakowski, young spies were in charge of installing cameras on the main train route from Poland to Ukraine, marking the city walls with political propaganda to increase divisions in Polish society and publish false news.

Since then, many other coats of bruh and FSB payments have been discovered in Poland. Let the property even pay for a fire to commit.

“From the current Intelligence Intelligence, we can see that Gru/FSB wallets are regularly active,” Zarakowski explained. “As an example, one address identified as a FSB belongs to a group of 161 bitcoin addresses with hundreds of outgoing transactions-Gotovo everything in Moscow working hours from 6 to 6pm.”

The Russian use of the Crypto Currency also refers to the financing of private mercenaries fighting in the Donbas region on the Russian side of the war in Ukraine and Even repayment of politicians in Europe to spread the crisp and anti-sterain messages.

And given the extensive range of sanctions set on Russia and Russian subjects, FSB and other agencies will probably continue to use the CRIPTO currency for a while.

“The advantage of using bitcoin or cryptocurrencies to pay agents or property is that any amount of money in the Crypto currency (even millions of USD) can be moved immediately all over the world without any government barriers, except for Gateway Kipto-Fiat,” Zovokowski said,

On top of that, the Russian intelligence apparatus has a lot of use for the transparency provided by the crypto currency.

“More ranked intelligence officers can monitor the flow of cryptocurrencies,” Zarakowski added. “Anything that consumes agents can be revised to ensure that it is spent for operational purposes.”