Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In Brief Arthur Budovsky, co-founder of popular digital currency business 'Liberty Reserve', was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for running a money laundering scheme for hackers, identity thieves, child pornographers and drug dealers around the globe. Since its inception, 2005, to the year 2013, when Liberty Reserve was shut down by authorities, the company processed more than $8 billion worth of transactions for more than 5.5 million users worldwide. He was also ordered to forfeit $122 million and fined $500,000. The co-founder of Liberty Reserve, a widely-used digital currency, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday for running a global money-laundering scheme that operated as "the financial hub for cyber criminals around the world." Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, 42, ran an online digital currency business out of Costa Rica called Liberty Reserve from around 2005 until it was shut down by the federal authorities in 2013 with the arrest of Bud

Liberty Reserve , a payment processor similar to Paypal was down on Saturday after the founder of Liberty Reserve, Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk , 39, on Friday was reportedly arrested in Spain by Costa Rican authorities after his they raided suspect´s home and offices in San José and Heredia. Mr. Belanchuk, a Costa Rican citizen of Ukrainian origin, was under investigation since 2011 after authorities flagged his firm for money laundering . Investigators say that Budovsky's businesses in Costa Rica , including Liberty Reserve , were used to launder money for child pornography websites and drug trafficking. Liberty Reserve is a largely unregulated money transfer business that allows customers to open accounts using little more than a valid email address, and this relative anonymity has attracted a huge number of customers from underground economies, particularly cyber crime . It allowing users to nearly anonymously open accounts with limited documentation of identity. Dep