U.S. Orders MEXC Cut Off and Sanctions Eight Canadian Money Firms

Pamphlets V9 news card. Photograph: Loren / Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday ordered banks to stop processing transfers involving major cryptocurrency exchange MEXC Global and sanctioned eight money-services businesses in Canada, pushing Washington’s campaign against Iranian financial networks deep into North America’s retail-currency and digital-asset channels.

The paired actions, announced November 6, join a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network order against MEXC with Office of Foreign Assets Control designations targeting firms in Ontario and British Columbia. Treasury alleges that the exchange facilitated at least $16 billion in transactions connected to sanctions evasion, cybercrime and other illicit activity between May 2021 and May 2026.

“Financial institutions cannot have it both ways: Either you support the Iranian regime, or you have access to the U.S. financial system,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. The language captures the practical force of the action: Washington is using access to dollar clearing as leverage against a global crypto platform and Canadian businesses that may hold few assets inside the United States.

A $16 billion case against a major exchange

The U.S. Treasury Department building in Washington. Photograph: Loren / Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

FinCEN’s order prohibits U.S. financial institutions from transmitting funds to or from MEXC. It takes effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register and carries possible civil or criminal penalties for violations. Treasury said MEXC processed more than $1 billion per day and held about $5 billion in reserves as of September, placing it among the world’s 20 largest convertible virtual-currency exchanges.

The department’s figures remain government allegations, not judicial findings. Treasury says nearly $1.5 billion of the flagged transactions related to Russian sanctions evasion, including $232 million in direct transfers with entities sanctioned by the United States, European Union or Britain. It also alleges that MEXC handled roughly $1 billion in direct transactions with more than 40 Iranian crypto exchanges and about $22 million for Iran’s central bank, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force.

FinCEN also cited North Korean sanctions evasion, ransomware payments, scams and darknet-market activity. MEXC publicly claims anti-money-laundering and customer-verification controls and bars customers in some sanctioned jurisdictions. Treasury argues that severe gaps in those controls allowed prohibited transactions to continue.

Eight Canadian firms enter the sanctions net

Storefronts on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, June 7, 2025. Photograph: Frank Schulenburg / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

OFAC separately designated Diverse Trade Inc., which operates as Million Exchange; 1380079 BC Limited; Top PC Technician Inc.; NIA Nations Currency Ltd.; 2397639 Ontario Ltd., operating as Farah Exchange; CCC Inc.; B Galaxy Inc.; and Darvish Exchange.

The firms advertise combinations of currency exchange, transfers between Iran and Canada, and digital-asset trading, according to Treasury. The department alleges that some associated crypto addresses dealt with sanctioned Iranian exchanges or addresses connected to the IRGC. It also accused several businesses of moving drug proceeds for Ryan Wedding, the Canadian former Olympic snowboarder taken into U.S. custody in January on trafficking allegations.

The designations freeze property under U.S. jurisdiction and generally prohibit U.S. people and companies from dealing with the listed firms. They do not amount to Canadian criminal convictions. Treasury said it coordinated the action with Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, along with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“Canada cannot be a safe haven for illicit financial facilitators that provide sanctions evasion services to the Iranian regime and its proxies,” Bessent said. Reuters independently confirmed the announcement and the immediate financial consequences, but its first dispatch carried no responses from MEXC or the eight named businesses.

Dollar power moves into crypto’s plumbing

The significance lies beyond the company list. Washington is treating crypto exchanges, neighborhood money-transfer businesses and traditional correspondent banks as parts of one sanctions battlefield. The MEXC order targets the point where digital assets must eventually touch regulated finance; the Canadian designations warn smaller intermediaries that geographic distance from Iran offers no insulation from U.S. dollar power.

That strategy can disrupt evasion networks, but it also places heavy weight on Treasury’s own blockchain analysis and intelligence claims. The next test will be whether Canadian regulators take parallel enforcement action, whether MEXC challenges the order, and whether the targeted flows migrate to less transparent exchanges. For now, the United States has drawn a bright line through a large section of the global crypto market — and put eight Canadian businesses on the wrong side of it.