Money Launderer ‘Elon Musk’ Exposed by FBI, Revealing Clientele

In 2023, the FBI arrested a money launderer operating under the alias ElonmuskWHM. Law enforcement leveraged his connections in a covert operation to identify clients of the illegal network, as reported by 404 Media.

Since 2021, the perpetrator had advertised his services on darknet platforms and communicated via encrypted messengers. During the investigation, FBI specialists uncovered the true identity of ElonmuskWHM as 30-year-old Indian national Anurag Pramod Murarki, who had applied for entry into the United States.

The authorities approved his visa and arrested him upon arrival. ElonmuskWHM agreed to cooperate with the investigation and continued operations under law enforcement supervision.

Murarki employed an informal money transfer system akin to the Arabic Hawala for laundering money. Indian expatriates wishing to send money to their relatives or families handed cash to ElonmuskWHM, who offered clients the option to transfer the equivalent amount in cryptocurrency. According to on-chain data, digital assets worth approximately $90 million passed through the scheme.

The majority of ElonmuskWHM’s clientele were drug traffickers, while the wealthiest were hackers often behind major cryptocurrency breaches.

Control over the scheme enabled law enforcement to identify several criminals within months, including members of the hacker group Scattered Spider. FBI agents managed to prevent the laundering of $1.4 million in illicit proceeds.

In January 2025, Murarki was sentenced to 121 months in prison.

“The defendant conducted one of the largest and most successful darknet operations for converting cryptocurrency to cash, laundering over $24 million in less than two years,” prosecutors stated at the time.

Earlier in February, U.S. authorities seized crypto assets worth $31 million, linked to the 2021 hack of the AMM protocol Uranium Finance.