Ohio Man Sentenced to Three Years in Prison for Operating Dark Web Search Engine and Cryptocurrency Money-Laundering Service

Larry Dean Harmon, 41, set up Grams in April 2014. Three months later he also set up on the dark web Helix, a so-called mixer or tumbler service that pools and swaps people's Bitcoins to obfuscate the original sources

An Ohio man who ran the Grams dark-web search engine and the Helix cryptocurrency money-laundering service has been sentenced to three years in prison.

Larry Dean Harmon, 41, set up Grams in April 2014. Three months later he also set up on the dark web Helix, a so-called mixer or tumbler service that pools and swaps people's Bitcoins to obfuscate the original sources, according to court documents. You put your BTC into Helix and you get the equivalent amount of other people's out.

Over three years of operation, Harmon laundered 354,468 bitcoins (around $311 million at the time, about $32 billion these days) and charged a possible 2.5 percent fee for transactions.

His assets, including a Trezor crypto wallet, were seized, and he faced charges that could put him in prison for over 20 years.

However, his younger brother Gary managed to access a seized cryptocurrency storage device using his brother's credentials and stole more than 712 Bitcoin. He then rather foolishly went on a spending spree, being photographed in a bath full of money and buying a luxury condo in Cleveland. In 2023 he was sentenced to four years and three months in prison for the theft.

The elder Harmon pleaded guilty in August 2021, and agreed to the forfeiture of more than 4,400 Bitcoins (today worth $400,200,000) and other seized properties.

"Harmon admitted that he conspired with Darknet vendors to launder bitcoin generated through drug trafficking and other illegal activities," assistant director in charge Steven D’Antuono of the FBI’s Washington Field Office said at the time. That "guilty plea demonstrates the FBI’s commitment to infiltrate and shut down the cryptocurrency money-laundering networks that support cyber-criminal enterprises."

In addition to his time behind bars, Larry Harmon will be on probation for three years and also faces having to pay back a further $311,145,854, along with having to forfeit other seized cryptocurrencies, real estate, and monetary assets. He has already been fined $60 million by the US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.