In total, users of such countries made about 66,000 transactions in digital currencies worth about $15.3 million.
As emphasized in OFAC’s statement, the amount of the settlement was based on the facts that Poloniex violations were “not voluntarily reported,” but were “not egregious” in and of themselves.
Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria were on the list of countries with users from which the site worked.
At the same time, the exchange had “sufficiently high quality” customer identification procedures and IP-address determination system, so the company had all the necessary data to know about the service of customers from banned jurisdictions.
The site has been tracking IP addresses since 2015 and did not block banned addresses until 2017.
It is worth noting that this is not the first fine by U.S. regulators for the Poloniex exchange. In 2021, the site was fined more than $10 million for trading securities without registration.