Server shut down Zurich authorities strike a blow against crypto money laundering

After months of investigation, the Zurich public prosecutor's office succeeded in shutting down a Bitcoin server last week. It had been used to launder billions in proceeds from crime.

An unknown perpetrator had been operating a so-called "Bitcoin mixer" under the name "cryptomixer.io" since 2016, which was available on Clearweb and the darknet. The funds originated primarily from illegal darknet transactions, ransomware ransom payments, fraudulent online stores, crypto thefts and other criminal offenses, as the Zurich public prosecutor's office writes in a press release.

In a bitcoin mixer, paid-in bitcoins are mixed with bitcoins from other users through a large number of transactions in order to make tracing impossible. The transaction volume amounted to well over one billion francs in Bitcoin, with the operator's profit estimated at several million francs.

Together with cyber specialists from the municipal and cantonal police, the Public Prosecutor's Office II of the Canton of Zurich located the server infrastructure in the Canton of Zurich and shut it down at the end of November 2025. The working capital worth around 23 million Swiss francs in Bitcoin was seized, and the infrastructure and domain were confiscated.

With the support of Eurojust and Europol, a transnational joint investigation team was formed with the Zurich authorities, the Public Prosecutor General's Office in Frankfurt am Main and the German Federal Criminal Police Office. The investigation is still ongoing. In particular, the 12 terabytes of data secured from the infrastructure are being analyzed.