AML Trends in 2022: What Y ou Need to Know .

The UN estimates 2-5% of global GDP or $0.8 - $2.0 trillion dollars are laundered

Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen, an Australian man in his mid-30s, with a rural Catholic upbringing, is a founder of THORChain, a blockchain through which users can swap one cryptocurrency for another and earn fees from making those swaps. THORChain is permissionless, so anyone can use it without getting prior approval from a centralized authority. As a decentralized network, the blockchain is built and run by operators located across the globe. During its early days, Thorbjornsen himself hid behind the pseudonym "leena" and used an AI-generated female image as his avatar. But around March 2024, he revealed his true identity as the mind behind the blockchain. If there is a central question around THORChain, it is this: Exactly who is responsible for its operations?

Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen is a leader of THORChain, a blockchain that is not supposed to have any leaders--and is reeling from a series of expensive controversies. We can do whatever we want," Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen tells me from the pilot's seat of his Aston Martin helicopter. As we fly over suburbs outside Melbourne, Australia, it's becoming clear that doing whatever he wants is Thorbjornsen's MO. Upper-middle-class homes give way to vineyards, and Thorbjornsen points out our landing spot outside a winery. "They're going to ask for a shot now," he says, used to the attention drawn by his luxury helicopter, emblazoned with the tail letters "BTC" for bitcoin (the price tag of $5 million in Australian dollars--$3.5 million in US dollars today--was perhaps reasonable for someone who claims a previous crypto project made more than AU$400 million, although he also says those funds were tied up in the company). Thorbjornsen is a founder of THORChain, a blockchain through which users can swap ...

You guess is as good as mine as to why a film about blockchain technology needs to be filmed this way, but Doug Liman has been connected with plenty of unusual projects in the past, including a rumored Tom Cruise film that was supposed to film on the International Space Station.

The use of cryptocurrency in sales of human beings for prostitution and scam compounds nearly doubled in 2025, according to a conservative estimate. Many of the deals are happening in plain sight. Cryptocurrency's frictionless, transnational, low-regulation transactions have long promised the ability to pay anyone in the world for anything. More than ever before, that anything includes human beings: victims of human trafficking forced into scam compounds and the sex trade on an industrial scale, bought and sold in crypto deals carried out with impunity, often in full public view. In new research published today, crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis found that crypto-funded transactions for human trafficking--largely forced laborers trapped in compounds across Southeast Asia and coerced into working as online scammers, as well as sex-trafficking prostitution rings--grew explosively in 2025.

This approach enables evaluation of the model's performance within a time-sensitive

Asked about the terms of the deal, including the board seats, the timing and the size of the investment, Mr. Wachsman said, "We made the deal in question because we strongly believe that it was what was best for our company as we continue to grow." Representatives for Sheikh Tahnoon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump family's business dealings with the Emiratis have blurred the line between government and private enterprise, alarming ethics experts and congressional Democrats. Sheikh Tahnoon, a member of the Emirati royal family, has been a major foreign policy intermediary with the United States for over a decade on matters varying from combating terrorism to sharing advanced computer technology. He runs a sprawling investment empire that includes G42, a technology firm that has become a powerhouse in the booming world of artificial intelligence.