Are Criminals Really Switching From Crypto to Gold for Money Laundering?

Organised criminals in the UK are increasingly using gold to launder and hide the proceeds of their activities, according to a report from The Daily Mail.

As the price of gold remains close to record highs at nearly $3,400, the report cites anecdotal evidence of increased gold use among British criminals.

It refers to one case of an Essex drug dealer who in 2024 was found by police to have $32.425 worth of solid gold coins hidden in a safe, as well as to a 2022 case of a Birmingham gang who converted a portion of their $135,100 profits into gold bars.

One other example was the conviction in Bradford earlier this year of multiple gang members who laundered close to $359.4 million by buying gold grain, which is easier to conceal than bullion and which was largely sent out of the UK.

Speaking to The Daily Mail, legal consultant Gary Carroll explained that, as far as criminals are concerned, the precious metal has various advantages over cash.

“Gold lets criminals reduce £10,000 of drug money into an object they can fit in the palm of their hand,” he said. “The other benefit is gold tends to appreciate in value.”

Carroll also cites technological and societal reasons for the reported turn to gold, including the shift to a largely cashless society.

However, the newspaper’s citation of three incidents over the past three years doesn’t amount to convincing evidence of a growing trend, with reliable data on the use of precious metals by criminals rare to nonexistent.

Speaking to Decrypt, Ari Redbord, the Global Head of Policy and Government Affairs at TRM Labs, concedes that the criminal use of gold could “possibly” be increasing, without offering full support for such a claim.

“But it’s hard to quantify, because gold doesn’t move on a blockchain,” he says. “The very reason criminals use it is because it’s opaque.”

Despite affirming that there isn’t enough evidence or data to conclude that gold is becoming more popular, Redbord nonetheless affirms that TRM Labs does sometimes witness a “convergence” in the stores of value used by criminals.

“The [2016] Bitfinex case was one example in which the hackers bought gold bars as part of their laundering of stolen crypto proceeds,” he explained.

Rebord also acknowledges that gold has long been a preferred tool for money laundering, largely because of its portability, value and untraceability.

“There’s also been evidence in U.S. government reporting, like Treasury’s national risk assessments, pointing to gold as a method for evading sanctions and laundering proceeds from corruption or drug trafficking,” he adds.

As to whether gold might be preferable to crypto from the perspective of organized crime, Redbord also accepts that gold doesn’t leave “a digital breadcrumb trail” in the manner of most cryptocurrencies.

“But it’s also heavy, hard to transport in large quantities, and risky—you can lose it, or it can be seized,” he said.

Crypto is basically the opposite, given that it can move instantly across borders, although it is usually traceable (unless mixers or privacy coins are involved).

“At TRM, we help law enforcement agencies around the world track those flows, recover stolen funds, and dismantle networks,” Redbord explains. “That’s a lot harder to do with gold.”

As such, it does seem that gold will continue to play a role in money laundering, even if the use of crypto among criminals has surged in recent years, with the latest Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report revealing that illicit addresses received up to $51.3 billion in crypto last year.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.