MoneyFlip CEO paid hitmen in crypto to kill a man over unpaid debt, DOJ says

Marcos Arturo Kleiman Tronllan, CEO of San Diego-based MoneyFlip LLC, was arrested in Miami on July 30 after federal prosecutors accused him of paying $40,000 in cash and cryptocurrency to have a Mexican businessman kidnapped and killed over an unpaid debt.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California filed a criminal complaint identifying MoneyFlip as a registered money services business offering cross-border currency exchange. Kleiman, 40, a Mexican citizen and lawful U.S. permanent resident, was taken into custody by Homeland Security Investigations agents and is expected to be extradited to San Diego.

Prosecutors say crypto payments completed the murder-for-hire scheme

Investigators first identified Kleiman during an ongoing probe into money exchange businesses in San Diego and Imperial counties, where authorities suspected he used his business to evade Bank Secrecy Act reporting requirements and launder drug proceeds through cross-border currency transactions.

According to the complaint, undercover Homeland Security Investigations agents contacted Kleiman in February 2026, asking him to convert U.S. dollars represented as drug proceeds into cryptocurrency. The DOJ stated:

“Kleiman converted approximately $750,000 of United States currency into cryptocurrency and caused the transmission of those crypto coins into an undercover federal agent’s wallet. Kleiman charged a 10 percent fee.”

Prosecutors allege Kleiman then agreed to pay $40,000 to kidnap and kill the businessman, delivering two separate $5,000 cash deposits before undercover agents presented fabricated photographs and video showing the supposed victim dead. Authorities say Kleiman completed the arrangement with another cash payment and a transfer of 25,000 USDT into an undercover wallet.

Kleiman faces one count of murder-for-hire under 18 U.S.C. § 1958(a), which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

Money services businesses face federal crypto compliance rules

Federal anti-money laundering regulations treat many businesses exchanging or transmitting convertible virtual currency as money transmitters subject to the Bank Secrecy Act, requiring registration, customer identification, and suspicious activity reporting. FinCEN has applied these obligations for more than a decade and maintains a public registry of money services businesses.

Growing law enforcement scrutiny increasingly connects cryptocurrency transactions to violent crime, fraud, sanctions evasion, and money laundering investigations. Blockchain records can supplement traditional financial evidence by showing transfers between wallets.

Earlier cases show crypto’s role in violent-crime investigations

Cryptocurrency has surfaced in other murder-for-hire prosecutions involving concealed payments and undercover operations, including a case that ended in a nine-year prison sentence for a bitcoin-funded scheme and a separate bitcoin-funded dark web murder plot. Blockchain tracing has also supported homicide investigations and international asset freezes involving stablecoins, including a Kenyan probe that froze $751,853 in USDT tied to a Binance wallet.

The DOJ stated:

“Kleiman delivered a $5,000 cash payment to the undercover agents and transmitted approximately 25,000 USDT into an undercover cryptocurrency wallet as the final payments for the victim’s murder.”