Stefan Mileschin

The chequered history of digital currency hit another black square after the website of Liberty Reserve was shut and its founder arrested.

Inspector Knacker of the Barcelona Yard fingered the collar of Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, 39 and shut down Libertyreserve.com.

The coppers are investigating money laundering and the arrests were carried out by authorities in the US and Costa Rico.

According to The Tico Times, US officials likely will seek Belanchuk's extradition so that they can try him on one of those quaint kangaroo courts they have in the land of the free.

Belanchuk should have seen this one coming. His website has been under investigation since 2011 for money laundering.

The outfit is an almost unregulated money transfer business where users can open accounts with as little as an email address. Its digital currency allegedly has a huge user base from underground economies and cybercrime.

If you look at the Libertyreserve.com server it reveals entries of ns1.sinkhole.shadowserver.org and ns2.sinkhole.shadowserver.org, which were apparently changed sometime on Friday. Shadowserver is a non-profit which helps ISPs and web hosting firms eradicate botnets and malware infections on their servers.

http://news.techeye.net/business/lib...under-arrested