How exchangers rob using AML

This website was created to draw the crypto community’s attention to the problem of exchangers’ fraud: when attempting an exchange, your funds may be frozen (stolen) by the exchanger, and you may be required to pass KYC due to falling under AML.

What does this mean?

KYC — know your customer — is a banking regulation term meaning that a company must identify and verify the identity of a counterparty before conducting a financial transaction with them.

If the exchanger decides you must pass KYC, they can demand anything: from a screenshot of your crypto wallet to a video where you show yourself, all your documents, and even provide testimony.

In which cases do people fall under AML? What is it anyway?

AML — Anti Money Laundering, measures to combat money laundering, which must be strictly followed by all financial companies operating in the EU and the USA. AML involves verifying the identity of every client receiving fiat services, as well as monitoring their transactions.

There are services (for example, AMLBot) that, by analyzing blockchains, can tell you how “clean” or “dirty” your cryptocurrency is.

If AMLBot decides that your crypto is “dirty,” that gives exchangers a reason to freeze your funds and demand verification (documents, selfies, videos, etc.). And you don’t need to be trading drugs to receive dirty crypto — it could have become “dirty” ten transactions before it got to you. Practically no one is safe from so-called “dirty” crypto.

I’m an honest person, I have nothing to hide, I’ll pass verification and get my money back, right?

Sometimes yes, but more often verification is just a way to stall for time. And of course, a reason to steal money from those unwilling to verify themselves before scammers on the internet.

Many exchangers have adopted AML-bots. Dozens of millions of rubles are seized monthly from clients for failing AML checks. But you won’t easily learn this until you face it yourself. Exchangers avoid advertising the fact that, under the guise of following KYC and AML policies, they grant themselves the right to confiscate your funds: such terms are usually hidden deep in their websites, written in small print.

We manually investigated each exchanger’s involvement in AML fraud. Those caught stealing clients’ money were marked as SCAM on our site.

Exchangers with questionable reputations received a neutral status, while the remaining exchangers were marked as fair.

What are the alternatives?

You can use our website — en.antiswap.io to choose an exchanger. We provide search by exchange directions, check new reviews daily, assign the SCAM status to exchangers that freeze clients’ funds, continually work to find and integrate fair exchangers, add new currencies, and keep fighting AML abuse.

Attention! We provide a clearer and more convenient tool for studying reviews. The decision to cooperate with a particular exchanger or not is entirely yours.

How to avoid having your funds frozen?

We have prepared a set of recommendations that will help you minimize the risk of being scammed.

An exchanger froze my money, what should I do?

Write to us on Telegram @antiswapinfo, our lawyer will help unlock your funds.

We hope that after reading this information you won’t become a victim of AML fraudsters. Choose exchangers and check reviews on en.antiswap.io