Canadian Telecom Provider Sky Global Indicted on Crypto Money Laundering

US District Court for the Southern District of California has stated that Sky Global, a Canadian-based communications provider, had been engaging in a money laundering case involving cryptocurrencies.

Per the filings of the court, Sky Global sells encryption services and devices to transnational criminal organizations to facilitate illegal activity. Founded by Jean-Francois Eap and others in approximately 2010, Sky Global designed devices to prevent law enforcement from actively monitoring the communications between members of transnational criminal organizations. As part of its services, the firm guarantees that messages stored on its devices can be (and will be) remotely deleted if the device is seized by law enforcement or otherwise compromised.

There are at least 70,000 Sky Global devices in use worldwide, including in the United States. The company charged their clients a subscription fee of approximately $1,200 per six-month period and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profit by facilitating the criminal activity of transnational criminal organizations and protecting these organization from law enforcement for more than a decade.

Sky Global used bitcoin (BTC) "to facilitate illegal transactions" on the customers' website "to protect the membership's anonymity, and to facilitate the laundering of the membership's ill-gotten gains. It has facilitated criminal organizations to launder millions worth in crypto.

In response to the indictment, Jean-François Eap, CEO of Sky Global, rejected the accusations and issued the following statement: "To date, the authorities have not informed us of any of the proceedings which have been reported in the media. As I have been following the media reports in the past week, it is with great sadness that I see far-reaching coverage of what can only be described as erosion of the right to privacy."

"Sky Global was not created to prevent the police from monitoring criminal organizations; it exists to prevent anyone from monitoring and spying on the global community," Eap added. "The indictment against me personally in the United States is an example of the police, and the government trying to vilify anyone who takes a stance against unwarranted surveillance."