They hit Roman Sterlingov with a $395 million forfeiture and 12.5 years in federal prison for running a Bitcoin mixer.
The government's own evidence says Bitcoin Fog could have earned $8 million in fees, max, over a decade. They charged him 50x their own ceiling. They counted every coin that passed through the mixer as if he owned it, like seizing an entire ATM's cash from the gas station that just hosts the machine.
Where did the $395 million number come from? Chainalysis software. Proprietary. The defense was denied access to the source code. The lead investigator testified under oath she was "unaware" of any peer-reviewed validation that the thing even works.
Same software, same company, just got caught overstating Celsius assets by $3.3 billion against $680 million actual (Case 1:25-cv-02669, SDNY). The IRS has paid them over $4 million.
Unaudited black-box software is now sending men to prison and confiscating fortunes that never existed. Due process traded away to protect a corporate trade secret.
This is crypto lawfare. Free Roman Sterlingov.
@TorEkelandPLLC@mikehassard
https://t.co/84DoHX09OL
Singapore’s Foreign Minister, Dr Balakrishnan casually explaining how he built his own AI agent (a 2nd brain for diplomacy) using Claude & WhatsApp integration etc. on a Raspberry Pi
“You cannot govern a technology you have only been briefed on.” 🇸🇬
‼️🚨 ALARMING: Google now treats privacy as suspicious behavior by default. Users of GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/OS, and other deGoogled Android phones are being locked out of millions of websites unless they install the exact Google Play Services software they deliberately removed.
GrapheneOS is recommended by the EFF and used by journalists, lawyers, and activists in high-risk environments. The audience most likely to read Google's data practices and refuse its terms is now flagged as fraudulent for that exact decision.
What happened?:
▪️ Google announced "Cloud Fraud Defense" at Cloud Next on April 22-23, 2026, branding it "the next evolution of reCAPTCHA." Existing reCAPTCHA customers were auto-migrated.
▪️ When the system flags traffic as suspicious, the old click-the-bus puzzle is gone. Users get a QR code instead.
▪️ Scanning the QR code requires Google Play Services running on the device. Internet Archive snapshots show this requirement has been live since at least October 2025, silently rolled out for 7 months before anyone noticed.
▪️ No Play Services = no QR scan = locked out.
The bigger picture:
▪️ Google already tried this in 2023. It was called Web Environment Integrity (WEI), and it would have let Google decide which devices were "real enough" to access the web. Standards bodies and the public pushed back hard, and Google killed it. Three years later, the same idea is back, just hidden behind a QR code instead of a browser feature.
▪️ reCAPTCHA runs on millions of websites. Every developer who keeps using it is now, by default, telling deGoogled Android users they're not welcome...