The US Division of Justice has seized over $400 million in crypto, money, and actual property related to the Helix Bitcoin Mixer.
The US Division of Justice (DOJ) has formally seized greater than $400 million in cryptocurrencies, actual property, and money linked to the Helix Bitcoin Mixer.
The forfeiture was finalized in late January 2026, concluding years of litigation towards Helix’s operator, Larry Dean Harmon.
Helix’s Unlawful Exercise and Harmon’s Case
Helix, which operated from 2014 to 2017, was marketed as a tumbling service designed to anonymize Bitcoin transactions. Investigators discovered that it had turn out to be a serious hub for laundering funds related to drug trafficking, hacking, and different unlawful actions. Court docket filings show that Helix processed greater than 354,468 Bitcoin, valued at roughly $300 million on the time, for its customers.
Harmon, who additionally created the darknet search engine Grams, made the platform to combine straight with main darknet markets. Its Software Programming Interface (API) allowed them to attach the service to their Bitcoin withdrawal methods, incomes them a proportion of every transaction as fee and costs. Investigators additionally traced tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in illicit proceeds from a number of darknet markets via the blending service.
The Ohio-based operator of Helix was first charged in 2020 with cash laundering conspiracy and working an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise. In August 2021, he pleaded responsible to conspiracy to commit cash laundering and was sentenced in November 2024 to 36 months in jail, three years of supervised launch, a financial forfeiture judgment, and seized belongings.
On January 21, 2026, Decide Beryl A. Howell of the US District Court docket for the District of Columbia issued a closing forfeiture order, formally transferring the belongings to the federal government.
Regulators Ease Crackdown on Crypto Mixers
The Helix case is a part of a broader regulatory crackdown on cryptocurrency mixers and privateness instruments. Platforms resembling Twister Money have additionally confronted sanctions and enforcement actions in recent times. Whereas crypto advocates keep that these providers can provide reputable privateness protections, authorities proceed to concentrate on their potential use in felony exercise.
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In a associated growth, blockchain entrepreneur and Coin Middle fellow Michael Lewellen filed a lawsuit final yr difficult the DOJ, in search of a ruling that his non-custodial crypto crowdfunding platform, Pharos, doesn’t violate cash transmission legal guidelines. The authorized motion argues that software program builders creating non-custodial privateness instruments are being unfairly focused.
The Justice Division later introduced that it might now not pursue felony circumstances towards crypto exchanges, builders, or customers for regulatory violations. This growth follows the disbanding of the Nationwide Cryptocurrency Enforcement Crew (NCET), the specialised unit accountable for investigating crypto-related felony exercise.
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