UK Crypto Crackdown: Two Arrested, Seven ATMs Seized in Major Bust!

Authorities Raid Southwest London, Target Unregistered Crypto Exchange

Holy smokes! The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Metropolitan Police just dropped the hammer on an unregistered crypto exchange. They arrested two suspects and nabbed seven crypto ATMs in a series of raids across southwest London. Talk about a wake-up call for the crypto world!

The FCA isn't messing around. They grilled the suspects and let them go for now, but this investigation is far from over. No charges yet, but you can bet they're digging deep into this mess.

Listen up, folks: running a crypto exchange or ATM without FCA registration is a big no-no in the UK. You've gotta play by the rules, which means following those anti-money laundering regs and doing your due diligence on customers and their funds.

Therese Chambers from the FCA laid it out straight: there are zero legit crypto ATMs in the UK right now. She's warning that using those unregistered machines is just fueling crime, and operators better watch out for some serious heat coming their way.

The FCA's been cracking down hard on these shady ATM ops since January 2021. If you want to run a crypto biz in the UK, you better be registered with the FCA, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

These watchdogs are all over the crypto scene, constantly sounding the alarm about the dangers of those wild-west, unregulated machines.

This latest bust comes hot on the heels of the UK's first-ever criminal sentencing over unregistered crypto ATMs just earlier this year. Olumide Osunkoya, the mastermind behind the £2.5 million GidiPlus crypto ATM network, got slapped with a four-year prison sentence. Dude kept running his shady ops even after the FCA gave him the boot, using fake IDs and dodging basic financial safeguards while raking in up to 60% markups. Talk about a crypto cowboy!

While the UK's put the kibosh on crypto ATMs, other countries are all over the map on this. The US has a whopping 29,000 of these machines in action, but the regulators are starting to get real nosy. Nebraska's throwing down licensing rules, transaction limits, and scam refunds, while Spokane, Washington, is going for a straight-up ban.

Down in New Zealand, they've gone full-on ban-hammer on crypto ATMs. And just this month, Australia tightened the screws with cash limits per transaction and mandatory scam warnings after a bunch of big-time fraud cases tied to Bitcoin ATMs.