The U.S. Department of Justice said it has finalized the forfeiture of more than $400 million in assets seized from Larry Dean Harmon, the operator of the crypto mixer Helix. After a final order from Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the government obtained legal title to the assets, according to a Jan. 29 DOJ statement.
Helix was described by the DOJ as a cryptocurrency mixing service that helped criminal users, including online drug dealers, launder digital funds and hide transaction trails while it was active. Mixers pool crypto from multiple sources and redistribute it in a way that conceals where the money came from and where it went.
Helix moved more than 354,000 Bitcoin
The DOJ said that between 2014 and 2017, Helix processed more than 354,000 Bitcoin. It also said that over $300 million in cryptocurrency passed through the service as part of a broader effort to conceal proceeds tied to darknet markets.
Authorities said the assets were seized from Harmon, who built both Helix and the Grams search engine. Grams was integrated with darknet marketplaces including AlphaBay, a setup the DOJ said enabled digital currency laundering on a large scale. The department added that Harmon kept a share of the transactions as commissions and fees for running Helix.
Operator pleaded guilty and was later sentenced
Harmon pleaded guilty in 2021 to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and violating the Bank Secrecy Act after being arrested the year before. He was later sentenced in 2024 to three years in prison.
The case also extended to his family. In 2022, Gary James Harmon, Larry Harmon’s brother, was indicted for allegedly using stolen credentials to steal seized crypto assets that were being stored in an IRS evidence locker at the time.
Mixers remain under pressure from regulators
The Helix forfeiture lands as crypto mixers continue to face pressure from U.S. regulators and enforcement agencies globally. Authorities have argued that these tools are often used to support money laundering at scale. At the same time, the legal debate remains unsettled, because the existence of a mixer alone is not automatically illegal.
Privacy advocates have pushed back on that framing. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has argued that creating decentralized privacy tools is not, by itself, a criminal act, and that developers should not be punished simply because others misuse their code. Last month, President Donald Trump said he was reviewing a possible pardon for Keonne Rodriguez, co-founder of Samourai Wallet, who was sentenced to five years in prison on charges related to money laundering and unlicensed money transmission.