ARREST OF BITZLATO CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGE OWNER ANATOLY LEGKODYMOV IN MIAMI DREDGED UP OLD MEMORIES, NONE OF THEM GOOD

When Bitzlato's owner, Anatoly Legkodymov, was arrested by the FBI in Miami this week, anyone who lives here was reminded that financial criminals seem to have a habit of gravitating to the Magic City's sandy shores. It wasn't that many years ago that no less that nineteen separate Russian organized crime groups were known to be present, and the FBI very quietly maintained a task force, known as Odessa, in South Florida, with Russian speakers, to target them. Miami Beach functioned as a rest and recreation center for their members, a number of whom, after engaging in a particularly fatal activity in their native country, during the freewheeling 1990s, would relocate to the Beach, until the furor of that specific shooting blew over at home, or at least the media ceased covering it.

It was the Odessa unit that, when it received information from one of their Arabic-speaking informants who, while serving patrons at a South Florida hot spot, overheard some of the 9-11 terrorists discuss attacking Washington in the summer of 2011, and whose agents the dismissed the intelligence as bogus, demanding that the source only seek information on Russians purchasing narcotics, and stop telling them tall tales. Up in nearby Boca Raton, financial crime by career criminals moving there to enjoy the climate and luxury  surroundings, while committing financial crime led some to wonder whether the United States Attorney's Office in the Southern District  should open a branch office there to deal with it.

Miami residents still cringe when they recall the case of Ludwig Fainberg, also known as Tarzan, the owner of the infamous Porky's, convicted of attempting to sell a Soviet submarine to Colombian narcotics traffickers, and of course, city fathers have been trying to sweep all remnants of the 1980s Miami Vice period, when the city was a violent Mecca for cocaine trafficking from Colombia from memory.

Therefore, in a city where our tech-savvy mayor touts the virtues of his Miami Coin, and South Florida is fast becoming a destination for America's high tech industry, it's no wonder criminals are beating a path to our sunny city. The greatly expanded Brickell Avenue financial district, now also becoming home to newly-opened offices of some of America's tech giants, needs to be on guard against the influx of this new breed of criminal, be they Russian, American or European, seeking to commit crypto offenses here, and compliance officers at Miami's banks should educate themselves about cryptocrime, and labor to keep the bad actors at bay, and out of their banks.

 Since Miami still attracts more than its share of career criminals, its compliance officers should govern themselves accordingly in 2023. regarding the latest in a long line of them to get sand in their shoes in South Florida, using next-generation technology to identify, interdict, and bar them from getting in the door in the first place.