Handwritten notes on €5 bills found in a 2021 Spanish cocaine raid led Europol and Albania's SPAK to a cross-border crypto laundering network linked to the Çopja group. Authorities seized over €35 million, while case files cite Binance, Tron/USDT flows, and a Milan front that bought about $40 million in crypto between October 23, 2024 and July 9, 2025.

On January 10 2026, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned platform X over reports that its Grok chatbot has been used to generate sexualized and exploitative images. Australia's eSafety Office has seen a recent rise in complaints linked to Grok, while Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs has temporarily blocked the chatbot over concerns about non-consensual sexual deepfakes. X has restricted Grok's image tools to paying subscribers, as regulators in both countries push for stronger safety guardrails around generative AI content.

On January 10, 2026, authorities in Louisiana reported recovering $200,000 taken through Bitcoin ATM scams that targeted elderly residents. Police and consumer advocates said the funds were retrieved under a new state law that imposes warning requirements, transaction limits and waiting periods on Bitcoin ATMs. Officials also highlighted a broader rise in such schemes, noting that reported Bitcoin ATM fraud reached $333 million in 2025.

Ethereum is evaluating EIP-8004/ERC-8004 "Trustless Agents," a proposal to let autonomous AI agents operate on-chain through new identity, reputation, and validation registries. According to U.Today, the proposal is under review and may align with 2026 network upgrades, as the Glamsterdam hard fork targets a move toward six-second blocks in Q2 2026.

Tether has announced a new partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to fund cybersecurity education in Senegal, victim support in six African countries, and blockchain awareness initiatives in Papua New Guinea. The collaboration follows an earlier enforcement phase in which Tether froze $3.3 billion across 7,268 wallet addresses between 2023 and 2025, and now shifts toward development-focused efforts aimed at tackling scams, human trafficking, and digital asset fraud.

As of January 10, 2026, this review outlines compliant crypto casinos accessible to US and EU players, noting that U.S. licensing is absent and EU rules are state-driven. Highlights include Curaçao-licensed platforms, Estonia-licensed Yolo, and offers such as a >50,000 USDT jackpot, $2,500 welcome rewards, and bonuses up to 470%.

On January 10, 2026, reports highlighted that a UK-based crypto entrepreneur connected to Paradox Metaverse was linked to what authorities described as the largest illegal drug operation in the country. According to The Guardian, MHRA officers raided a Northampton unit last October, seizing thousands of unlicensed Alluvi pens, raw chemicals, equipment, and £20,000 in cash.

According to TRM Labs' forthcoming 2026 Crypto Crime Report, UK-registered exchanges Zedcex and Zedxion operated as a single platform that routed about USD 1 billion, mostly in USDT on TRON, through wallets linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The analysis shows that IRGC-associated activity dominated Zedcex's flows in 2023, 2024, and 2025, including more than USD 10 million in late 2024 reportedly transferred directly to an OFAC-designated Houthi financier without intermediaries. TRM argues this case illustrates how offshore crypto exchanges can become long-term sanctions-evasion infrastructure rather than one-off laundering channels.