INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Hamilton County man Maximiliano Pilipis is in federal custody in Florida.
As of Tuesday night, I-Team 8 didn’t know what specific charges he faced, but in November, the government seized more than $9 million from two separate bank accounts.
Court filings allege that Pilipis was illegally operating a cryptocurrency exchange in the small Caribbean nation of Dominica.
“We have been very active in pursuing outside business, and this is one case in a very long list of cases,” said Professor Frank Emmert of the IU McKinney School of Law.
Emmert analyzed the 20-page court filing that seized the money from Billibis. He told I-Team 8 that the reason for the seizure was because Pilipis had not registered his company with a government agency called FinCEN.
“It stands for Financial Crimes and Law Enforcement Network. Their mission is primarily, but not exclusively, to prevent money laundering and basically tax evasion. The Treasury wants to make sure that on the one hand our businesses and our citizens pay their taxes, and that our residents pay their taxes correctly, and on the other hand “Other, the money is not used for crime. For example, financing terrorism or anything like that.”
The federal court application to seize the funds contains several diagrams detailing how Pilipis transferred cryptocurrency from one account to another. The file stated that the transactions were money laundering because the money he was transferring came from his company, which was operating illegally.
Emmert said he would need to analyze the formal criminal charges to determine whether Pilipis had laundered money.
“Did he do any money laundering himself? Did he transfer money to any organization for illegal purposes? We don’t know that, but he made it possible for others to do it, for people who were registering their wallets and trading through his exchange, and that’s really what he’s in trouble with now.”
Pilipis was scheduled to appear Friday in federal court in Florida. I-Team 8 will be following the hearing to find out what charges Pilipis may face.