Larry Dean Harmon, a US resident, has been sentenced to three years in prison for his role in operating Helix, a cryptocurrency “mixer” service linked to illegal activities on the darknet. Harmon is also required to forfeit more than $400 million worth of cryptocurrency, real estate, and other assets as part of his sentencing.

Harmon, 40, pleaded guilty in 2021 to conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with Helix, which was operational from 2014 to 2017. Helix facilitated the anonymization of cryptocurrency transactions, a service often exploited by criminals involved in drug trafficking and other illicit activities. According to court documents, Helix processed over 350,000 bitcoin valued at approximately $311 million at the time through transactions that concealed the identities of buyers and sellers.

According to the US authorities, Helix was closely integrated with Grams, a darknet search engine also run by Harmon. Together, the services formed a critical infrastructure for online drug dealers and other darknet operators seeking to launder illegal proceeds. Harmon developed an Application Programming Interface (API) to allow darknet marketplaces to incorporate Helix into their payment systems.

Investigators traced tens of millions of dollars in illicit funds from darknet marketplaces to Helix. In addition to laundering cryptocurrency, Harmon collected fees and commissions from the transactions.

Last week, Roman Sterlingov, a dual Russian-Swedish national and the founder of the longest-running cryptocurrency “mixer” service on the darknet, was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison on charges related to a massive cryptocurrency money laundering operations to date. According to court documents, Bitcoin Fog processed over 1.2 million bitcoin transactions valued at approximately $400 million at the time they occurred.

In related news, Indian police have arrested Masud Alam, a suspect linked to the theft of $230 million in cryptocurrency from Indian exchange WazirX. Alam allegedly created a fake WazirX account and sold it on Telegram, which was then used to breach the platform. The hackers drained funds from WazirX's hot wallet and attempted to access its more secure cold wallet. Police confirmed the hack was not a result of the exploitation of internal vulnerabilities.