FBI Infiltrates $24M Dark Web Laundering Scheme by Running It Themselves
In a rare undercover move, the FBI quietly took over a major Dark Web money laundering service after arresting its operator, Anurag Pramod Murarka—also known online as “ElonMuskWHM.”
Instead of shutting the network down, agents ran it for over a year to identify criminal clients using it to clean funds tied to hacks, drug sales, and violent crime.
Murarka had been laundering millions in crypto before he was detained during a medical visit to the U.S. With access to his infrastructure, the FBI monitored transactions and flipped several of his cash mules into informants.
Investigators used creative tactics, including sending obscure YouTube links through encrypted chats, then tracking viewers via Google data requests—an approach now facing criticism for possible privacy overreach.
In total, Murarka moved more than $24 million in under two years. He was sentenced to over 10 years in prison, and several of his clients have since been arrested.
The sting comes amid rising concerns over crypto-enabled laundering and follows incidents like the Bybit hack, where attackers fully cleaned out stolen funds.
Despite this breakthrough, the Department of Justice has announced plans to scale back enforcement on crypto platforms—potentially making future operations like this harder to pull off.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
