Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, the owner of Liberty Reserve, has been arrested in Spain for money laundering.This was revealed by a joint investigation by the Spanish and US police agencies.
Raids were conducted at his home and office's. The investigation had been on since 2011. Also apparently Budobsky's business in Costa Rica was financed by child pornography websites and drug trafficking.
Libirty Reserve's main domain libertyreserve.com is not showing the original site, its pointing to a sinkhole .
Update on 28/05/2013
The site is now showing a "This Domain Has been seized" message from the United States Global Illicit Financial Team.
Also this press release: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/May13/LibertyReservePR.php
Raids were conducted at his home and office's. The investigation had been on since 2011. Also apparently Budobsky's business in Costa Rica was financed by child pornography websites and drug trafficking.
Libirty Reserve's main domain libertyreserve.com is not showing the original site, its pointing to a sinkhole .
Update on 28/05/2013
The site is now showing a "This Domain Has been seized" message from the United States Global Illicit Financial Team.
Also this press release: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/May13/LibertyReservePR.php
As you can see the domain was transferred on May 24,2013 to point to shadowserver.org's name server - a server used by the US Governments to seize a website that has did an online fraud.
One of the EHN's reader, Jonathan Capistrano who contacted LR about the status of peoples funds was told that they will not be closing down but are taking a break and that LR will be back "new and better" and finally said that funds will stay there , with no reduction or increase in value.
Update: This might just be a response said by the LR team so that people do not panic.Legally since LR is not FDIC approved the US government is not responsible for the money people lost.