Arraignment is scheduled Tuesday for a Santa Monica man charged with utilizing his cryptocurrency money trade enterprise to launder hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in alleged felony proceeds.
Charles Randol, 33, has agreed to plead responsible on a future date to a federal cost of failure to take care of an efficient anti-money laundering program, a criminal offense that carries a sentence of as much as 5 years in federal jail, in response to the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace.
From October 2017 to July 2021, Randol owned and operated a virtual-currency cash companies enterprise often known as Digital Coin Methods LLC. The corporate supplied cryptocurrency money trade companies for a fee, in response to his plea settlement.
Randol met nameless prospects in individual to finish transactions, controlling and working a community of automated kiosks in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties that transformed money to Bitcoin and vice versa, and performed Bitcoin-for-cash transactions for unknown individuals who mailed massive quantities of U.S. foreign money to him, together with to publish workplace containers that he managed, court docket papers present.
Randol admitted in his plea settlement to repeatedly violating federal regulation and his firm’s personal insurance policies by facilitating suspicious foreign money trade transactions and taking steps to hide them from regulation enforcement.
For instance, Randol continuously performed in individual money transactions that exceeded $10,000 with nameless or pseudo-anonymous people, together with individuals who Randol knew solely by such monikers as Puppet Shariff, White Jetta, Yogurt Monster and Hood.
In his plea settlement, Randol admitted to partaking in particular transactions from October 2020 to January 2021 through which he exchanged a complete of $273,940 in money for Bitcoin with out requesting a reputation, proof of identification, Social Safety quantity, or some other details about the customer or the supply of the funds being exchanged — violations of the Financial institution Secrecy Act.
Randol additionally allowed criminals to construction and launder funds via his Bitcoin kiosks in malls, fuel stations and comfort shops in Los Angeles, Glendale, Santa Clarita, Huntington Seaside, Santa Ana and Riverside, prosecutors allege.
