Iran's $11B Crypto Exchange Was Run by the Supreme Leader's Inner Circle — Using a Fake Name

The founders of Iran’s largest crypto exchange used a fake last name to hide that their family has been at the center of Iranian theocratic power since the 1979 revolution.

The U.S. Treasury’s OFAC just sanctioned Nobitex — Iran’s dominant crypto exchange with 11 million users and $11.4 billion in 2024 volume — along with three other Iranian platforms: Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex. The designation landed June 2, 2026.

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The Fake Name

Ali and Mohammad Kharrazi founded Nobitex in 2018. But in corporate filings, university records, and even a Nobitex marketing brochure, they registered under the surname Aghamir — specifically, Seyed Mohammad Ali Aghamir and Seyed Mohammad Aghamir.

The reason for the alias is obvious once you know who the Kharra­zis are.

Their grandfather sat on the Assembly of Experts — the body that selects Iran’s supreme leader — and once personally tutored Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as supreme leader after the February 2026 U.S.-Israeli airstrike. Their father, Ayatollah Bagher Kharrazi, founded the Iranian political organization Hezbollah (distinct from the Lebanese militia) and helped staff the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the revolution.

The Kharrazi family is related by marriage to all three of Iran’s supreme leaders. OFAC sanctioned the co-founders alongside Nobitex’s chairman Amir Hossein Rad and current CEO Seyed Ali Khoee.

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What Nobitex Actually Did

Nobitex didn’t just operate as a regular crypto exchange. According to Treasury:

• Processed over 50% of all Iranian digital asset inflows in 2025
• Helped Iran’s Central Bank access hundreds of millions in stablecoins, effectively circumventing dollar-denominated banking
• Processed transactions for IRGC-affiliated ransomware actors
• Allowed regime insiders to move wealth out of the country during internet blackouts
• Handled roughly 70% of Iran’s total crypto activity, per Reuters reporting

The exchange’s 2024 transaction volume of $11.4 billion makes it a serious financial institution — not a shadowy fringe operation. This was Iran’s shadow central bank, built on-chain.

For context: last year’s Operation Economic Fury froze ~$1 billion in Iran-linked crypto wallets. This action goes further, targeting the infrastructure layer itself.

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The $90M Hack Nobody Talks About

Nobitex was itself hacked for $90 million in June 2025. Sanctioned chairman Amir Hossein Rad is specifically credited by Treasury with having “helped reconstitute Nobitex’s operations” after that breach — a sign the exchange’s leadership wasn’t exactly arms-length from its day-to-day financial resilience.

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What This Means

Any crypto company or individual that transacted with Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, or Ramzinex is now in OFAC exposure territory. For compliance teams at centralized exchanges, this is a “drop everything and check” moment — especially any platform that listed these exchanges as fiat on-ramps or accepted deposits from wallets that touched Iranian DEX flows.

The Chainalysis designation analysis makes clear that Iran’s crypto ecosystem isn’t isolated: stablecoin flows tied to the Central Bank of Iran moved through international settlement rails before landing in Nobitex.

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Why This Matters for Crypto Jobs

Every time OFAC drops a designation package this large, compliance and blockchain analytics hiring surges. The firms that will benefit immediately:

• Chainalysis, TRM Labs, Elliptic — their government contract pipelines get replenished every time Treasury acts
• Exchange compliance teams — Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Binance.US are now urgently re-screening any wallet with Iranian exposure
• Law firms with sanctions practices — clients are calling today

If you’re a blockchain analyst, AML specialist, or crypto compliance lawyer — this is your moment. The market for people who understand on-chain tracing of sanctioned entities is hotter than ever.

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