Former Goldman Sachs banker and ex-DJ, 42, is indicted for running $2.3M ‘cash-to-Bitcoin money-laundering scheme on the dark web
Former Goldman Sachs banker and ex-DJ, 42, is indicted for running $2.3M ‘cash-to-Bitcoin money-laundering scheme on the dark web for crooks around the globe including drug traffickers, organized crime, and catfish scammers’
- Thomas Spieker, along with his co-conspirators, used the electronic currency to make it possible to commit a wide range of crimes
- Prosecutors said Spieker and a rotating set of accomplices, acted as a Bitcoin ATM, using bank and crypto exchange accounts to convert over $2.3million
- All seven defendants pled not guilty to a wide array of charges
- Spieker is accused of, among other things, laundering over $38,000 to Zashan Khan and Cosma Siekierski to sell MDMA, Xanax and other counterfeit drugs
- John Humphrey and Fidello Palermo, both 51, are accused of taking it over from Khan and Siekierski out of Rochester in upstate New York
- He’s also alleged to have given the member of an European crime syndicate $620,000 and providing $267,000 to Anderson Laroc for a ‘romance scam.’
A former Goldman Sachs banker and ex-DJ has been charged with masterminding a global ‘cash-to-Bitcoin’ money-laundering scheme.
Thomas Spieker, 42 , along with his six co-conspirators, face numerous charges for alleged ‘dark-web drug sales’, identity theft and a catfishing scam under what Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg calls a global money laundering operation.
Prosecutors said Spieker – with the assistance of Dustin Sites, 33 – acted as a Bitcoin ATM, using bank and crypto exchange accounts to convert over $2.3million into Bitcoin and more than $380,000 Bitcoin into American dollars.
‘As alleged, this sprawling web of international money laundering helped drug traffickers, an organized crime ring, and scammers hide their criminal activity and transmit their proceeds around the globe,’ Bragg, who has been criticized since taking office for his soft-on-crime policies, said in a statement.
All seven defendants pled not guilty to a wide array of charges.
Spieker is a former Goldmann Sachs equity derivatives specialist who has in the past been profiled as a DJ and ‘party producer’
following the DA’s investigation
fashion line to sell drugs on the dark web.
Spieker is a former Goldmann Sachs equity derivatives specialist who has in the past been profiled as a DJ and ‘party producer,’ according to the New York Times. He also lists himself as being in production and putting on concerts on his LinkedIn profile.
He is accused of, among other things, laundering over $38,000 to Zashan Khan and Cosma Siekierski to sell MDMA, Xanax and other counterfeit drugs under a dark web vendor that took its dark web name and logo from Drake’s October’s Very Own fashion line.
John Humphrey and Fidello Palermo, both 51, are accused of taking it over from Khan and Siekierski out of Rochester in upstate New York. They were stopped on a trip to Brooklyn and found with 1.7 kilograms of powder and crystalline ketamine and 140 vials of liquid ketamine.
He’s also alleged to have given the member of an eastern European crime syndicate $620,000 and providing $267,000 to Anderson Laroc for a ‘Nigeria-based romance scam.’
‘This case shows us how new technologies like cryptocurrency can become key drivers of a wide-range of criminal activity that can easily span across the globe, but the indictment today makes clear that my Office has the tools and expertise to uncover and prosecute these schemes in any form that they take,’ Bragg added. ‘As technology evolves, so does our work, and alongside our partners, we will continue to dismantle these complex crime rings.’
Spieker used Google to research articles about those previously convicted of Bitcoin laundering to try and avoid the same pitfalls. He wrote in 2018 on Facebook that he was providing services for those who wish to ‘STAY COMPLETELY OFF THE RADAR.’
In one instance, Spieker bragged about making money off a nervous ketamine dealer and told another that 85 percent of his clientele ran credit card hustles.
Spieker used proxies like Khan, Siekierski, Laroc, Sites, Humphrey and Palermo to facilitate transfers across 28 bank accounts and eight crypto exchange accounts.
The ringleader Spieker faces five counts of Unlicensed Money Transmission and three counts of Money Laundering.
The other six face various money laundering, criminal sale and fraud charges as part of the scheme, as well as grand larceny in Sites’ case.
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