The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has once again tricked criminals by pretending to be criminals themselves while dismantling a money laundering scheme.
Gabrielle Dudgeon, a public affairs specialist at the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky, told 404 Media that the FBI arrested Anurag Pramod Murarka, a 30-year-old Indian national, in 2023 for running his elonmuskwhm money-laundering website.
The agents then took over operations on the site and secretly ran it for almost a year. It helped the FBI investigate Murarka's customers, such as hackers and drug traffickers, who used elonmuskwhm to cash out their crypto assets.
Meanwhile, court documents revealed that the FBI found the elonmuskwhm money launderer as early as 2021. He operated on criminal darknet marketplaces such as White House Market and Dark0de Reborn, and the peer-to-peer exchange LocalMonero, offering to mail customers cash within the United States in return for bitcoin.
Murarka advertised his services, claiming that he would ship cash using US Postal Service Express Mail or Priority Mail, with package tracking available.
Moreover, on Dark0de Reborn, elonmuskwhm claimed that he was the only vendor who could provide up to $1 million per week. His four listings on this market were priced at $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000.
Meanwhile, on White House Market, the money launderer had five listings priced at $500, $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, and $10,000.
While investigating Murarka, the FBI and the United States Postal Inspection Service conducted several controlled sales of cryptocurrency with elonmuskwhm.
"Each time, 'elonmuskwhm' shipped cash through the mail to a Post Office box in the Eastern District of Kentucky, in exchange for a pre-determined amount of cryptocurrency. For example, on January 3rd, 2023, the FBI conducted a purchase of approximately $70,000 from 'elonmuskwhm'," according to the court documents.
In January 2025, Murarka, who also operated under the moniker la2nyc, was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. According to court documents, Murarka and his co-conspirators laundered more than $20 million in criminal proceeds.
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