A new filing in an Arkansas lawsuit against Hunter Biden claims that the former Vice President's son "is the subject of more than one (1) criminal investigation involving fraud, money laundering and a counterfeiting scheme."
Filed by private investigator Dominic Casey of D&A Investigations on behalf of Lunden Alexis Roberts - with whom Hunter fathered a child, Monday's "Notice of Fraud and Counterfeiting and Production of Evidence" alleges that Hunter Biden and associates Devon Archer and John Kerry stepson Christopher Heinz engaged in a money laundering scheme which accumulated over $156 million between March 2014 and December 2015.
According to the document, Biden, Archer and Heinz became directors of consulting firm Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC in order to "conceal their family members ownership," establishing financial accounts at Morgan Stanley and China Bank, the latter of which was used in a money laundering scheme.
Biden and associates are accused of using the counterfeiting scheme "to conceal the Morgan Stanley et al Average Account Value.
The filing also says that "Family members of DEFENDANT Robert Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and Christopher Heinz are business partners of Serhiy Leshchenko and Mykola Zlochevesky in the Ukraine, and are currently under investigation for their part in the counterfeiting scheme."
Of note, Leshchenko is a former Ukrainian parliamentarian who made headlines in August 2016 for helping to leak the so-called "black ledger" that resulted in the firing of then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort - the supposedly 'debunked' Ukraine meddling detailed in a November, 2017 Politico article.
Notably, following an outreach to the Ukrainian embassy by Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa,Artem Sytnyk, Ukraine's Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and Leshchenko released the "black ledger" containing off-book payments to Manafort. In December of 2018, a Ukrainian court ruled that Sytnyk and Leshchenko "acted illegally" by releasing Manafort's name - a conviction which was later overturned on a technicality.
Cryptocurrency exchange UPbit announced today that it lost almost US$50 million worth of ether (ETH) in an apparent security breach. According to this statement by Lee Seok-woo, the CEO of the exchange’s operator Dunamu, around 342,000 ETH were moved from the platform’s ‘hot wallet’ to this unrecognized wallet today shortly after 1 p.m. local time. Client funds were not affected, said the South Korea-based cryptocurrency exchange.
So we know that security is going to be a big issue if not THE issue in 2020, but what firms are doing something about it? As we’ve referenced before, there are security companies offering full-stack solutions, like Blackwatch Digital. But what exchanges are implementing them? What are the exchanges to watch in 2020?
So it’s only reasonable that ECXX would be snapped up next.
It seems like security is going to be the big concern for the Crypto community in 2020, and perhaps for the coming years ahead as well. But the biggest issue that companies face, isn’t implementing a good security protocol, it’s finding trustworthy employees, which will be hard to find in Asia. Although it has been known for years that the majority of hacks come from an inside threat, and this number keeps falling; the number is still quite large.
The majority (70%) of organizations are seeing insider attacks more frequently, with 60% experiencing at least one attack within the past 12 months, according to the Nucleus Cyber 2019 Insider Threat Report, conducted with Cybersecurity Insiders, released on Thursday.
The report surveyed 400,000 members of the Cybersecurity Insiders community to determine how prevalent email attacks are in the cyber threat landscape. Some 68% of respondents reported feeling "extremely to moderately" vulnerable to them, and 85% said it's difficult to fully see the damage caused from each attack.
One mistake that many Crypto exchange have made, is by being biased that Crypto is somehow different than I.T. – or in other words, that traditional threats do not apply. Exchanges have firewalls, Windows machines, networks, routers, and employees. Exchanges do not live inside their own world – they are part of the world that you and I are part of. This systemic (Cybernetics) thinking has not ‘trickled down’ to most of the exchanges, which is why we are seeing the hacks. Basic I.T. and security hygiene would have prevented 90% of these Crypto attacks.
In other words, it’s not the Blockchain being hacked – that’s possible but very complex. Hackers are using the tried and true methods of phishing, brute force attacks, and other methods that have been used since the 90s.
Various security companies have risen proposing a ‘Blockchain’ solution to security, when having secure protocols, as pioneered by ECXX, is sufficient.
So we’ll be watching ECXX closely in 2020, and look forward to seeing more security developments in a space plagued with fraud and hacks.
The Bank of England shut down an audio feed of market-sensitive information after it was used to offer some traders a competitive time advantage.
The feed supplies investors and central-bank watchers with audio from the news conferences by Gov. Mark Carney in the minutes after interest-rate decisions are published. Small changes in language from bank officials on the future path of interest rates can often move the pound or U.K. government bonds.
The audio feed, meant to be a backup to the main audio and video feed provided by Bloomberg LP, has been “misused by a third-party supplier to the Bank since earlier this year to supply services to other external clients,” the central bank said in a statement, without identifying the supplier.
Traders have long sought to gain access to market-sensitive information as quickly as possible, and the rise of electronic and algorithmic trading has made such information even more valuable.
The bank, which also didn’t identify the clients who received the information from the backup-audio supplier, said it was in the dark about the alleged misuse. “This wholly unacceptable use of the audio feed was without the Bank’s knowledge or consent,” the central bank said.
Statisma News and Data Ltd., an audio-delivery technology company, says on its website that it has covered public events in the U.K. since 2010 including Bank of England news conferences. It said in a statement published on its website Thursday, “We DO NOT carry embargoed information and we DO NOT release information without it first being made available to the public.” A Statisma spokesman couldn’t be reached for further comment.
On April 29, a tweet from an account linked to Statisma’s website enticed customers to watch government news conferences through its feed. “Hear the news first…up to 10 seconds faster than watching them live on TV,” the tweet said. The tweet appears to have been taken down Thursday.
A screenshot of an April tweet from an account linked to Statisma's website that appears to have been taken down Thursday.
Another tweet, posted Nov. 7, the same day that Mr. Carney was set to speak, said, “Sign up for a free trial at statisma.com to hear him first.”
A YouTube account that purported to be from Statisma News posted videos of Bank of England press conferences along with links to charts showing how the pound moved when Mr. Carney was speaking. This included a news conference on August 2, 2018, the day the bank raised interest rates for only the second time in a decade.
Statisma’s website said it is a unit of Encoded Media Ltd. Encoded Media describes itself as a media streaming company, founded in 2003, with the original aim of serving the finance industry. The companies share common directors according to U.K. corporate filings. Encoded executives couldn’t be reached for comment.
The Bank of England declined to comment on Statisma’s statement or on the social media posts from the @StatismaComms Twitter account. The monetary authority said Thursday it had referred the case to the Financial Conduct Authority, the U.K.’s market watchdog. Any misuse of the feed would likely fall foul of market abuse regulations, a person familiar with the FCA’s oversight role said.
The European Central Bank appears to have run into a similar issue. In September it started providing a low-latency or ultrafast audio feed of its press conferences, after the bank discovered that some companies were trying to sell access to a faster feed than the official video webcast, which has a delay of about 30 seconds. Audio-only feeds tend to be faster than video.
The new ECB audio feed has a delay of about three seconds, to help ensure a level playing field for listeners, an ECB spokesman said.
The Bank of England holds its news conferences at its fortresslike headquarters in the City of London. Reporters given access to rate decisions ahead of time are held in a “lock in” in the basement without internet access. After the decision is released, reporters move upstairs to an auditorium where the press conference takes place.
The press briefings often offer more detail and nuance than the official statements published on the central bank’s website. There are also question-and-answer sessions where the responses from policy makers at the BOE, including Mr. Carney, offer more spontaneous responses which have the potential to move markets.
“Having information a few seconds early—where fractions of a second make a difference—could be hugely advantageous,” said Ben Watford, partner and head of hedge funds at global law firm Eversheds Sutherland.
In 2017, the U.K. government restricted how it distributed economic data to markets after The Wall Street Journal documented how the information was leaking to traders before publication.
Central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, have also come under criticism in recent years for giving preferential access to big investors, who can glean future policy decisions from the meetings.
The Fed said Thursday that it “aims to make its press conferences available as widely as possible by streaming them live directly to the public and through accredited news organizations,” according to a spokesman. “We only use systems that are open for broad distribution,” he said.
The Fed has a pool arrangement with three news organizations. One of them at a time is allowed to attend a press conference and broadcast live, sharing the footage with the others for distribution.
The Fed doesn’t have a separate audio-only feed.
Information leaks at central banks don’t occur often but are potentially consequential when they do.
Several years ago, the Federal Reserve mistakenly emailed market-sensitive minutes of a monetary-policy meeting to a group of people, including investors, a full day before the document was scheduled to be released to the public.
In 2017, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker resigned after revealing his involvement in a 2012 leak of confidential information about Fed policy deliberations.
The alleged breach comes at a sensitive time for the Bank of England. Mr. Carney is set to step down at the end of January after serving in the job since 2013. While generally respected for his handling of monetary policy, he has also drawn sharp criticism from investors and politicians for what some say have been overly pessimistic predictions about the effects of Brexit on the economy.
Boris Johnson’s incoming government, fresh off last week’s election victory, has yet to name a successor.
—Anna Hirtenstein, Caitlin Ostroff, Tom Fairless and Sarah Chaney contributed to this article.
12.30 GMT. Mark Carney hosting Monetary Policy Report press conference, quarterly Inflation Report 