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In a federal courtroom in Seattle on Tuesday, Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former chief executive officer of Binance, stood up and apologized. Zhao, commonly known as CZ, said he was sorry for violating the bank secrecy act. His company, the world’s largest crypto exchange, had failed to do enough to stop money laundering, which federal investigators said resulted in Binance’s funneling money to a long list of criminals and bad actors. Zhao didn’t admit to knowing about this, but federal investigators say that his company facilitated payments to ransomware operators in North Korea who’d hacked US hospitals and schools, as well as crypto scammers, child p*rnographers, Iranian government officials and basically every terrorist organization you’ve heard of.
