A Phantom Executive a Purple Collar Cat and the Crypto Trail Linking London to Tehran

A fabricated chief executive assembled from stock footage and a white cat wearing a distinctive purple bell collar have become unlikely symbols of a sprawling cryptocurrency network allegedly tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. What began as a routine corporate registration in the United Kingdom has evolved into a case study of regulatory blind spots, sanctions evasion and the opaque power of blockchain finance.

An investigation by thespan>Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project/span> found that two UK-registered exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, processed roughly $94 billion in transactions despite filing as dormant companies. On paper, both firms listed a director and person of significant control named “Elizabeth Newman.” In practice, investigators uncovered no passport records, migration data or evidence that such a person exists.

Instead, promotional materials featured stock video clips, including footage labeled “Pretty black woman talking to camera,” repurposed to portray the fictitious executive. Other supposed team members also appeared to be generic stock images. The deception was made possible, in part, by gaps atspan>Companies House/span>, which until recently did not require identity verification for company filings.

Behind the digital façade, the investigation traced connections tospan>Babak Morteza Zanjani/span>, an Iranian tycoon sentenced to death in 2016 for embezzling oil revenues, a sentence later commuted in 2024. Zanjani briefly appeared as a director of Zedxion, and his name reportedly remains embedded in the metadata of the exchange’s white paper. A YouTube video shows him promoting Zedcex, further tightening the link.

Blockchain analysis byspan>TRM Labs/span> identified more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency flows connected to entities associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Among the transactions were over $10 million allegedly sent to a Yemeni financier accused of supporting Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping routes. The financial architecture described in the report suggests crypto infrastructure may have served as a parallel channel for sanctioned actors.

Investigators also drew on open-source intelligence. Social media posts by Zanjani’s partner, Solmaz Bani, reportedly tied her to domains linked to the exchanges and to login data associated with their operations. Images posted on Zedxion’s Telegram channel in May 2024 showed a white cat with grey-brown markings and a distinctive purple collar. A nearly identical cat appeared months later in photos on Bani’s now-deleted Facebook account. Even furniture seen in Zanjani’s posts allegedly matched items visible in materials linked to the exchanges. In an era of digital breadcrumbs, lifestyle details can become forensic evidence.

The geopolitical implications are significant. The report suggests the network may have helped finance activities connected to the Revolutionary Guard, including repression during protests in Iran in early 2026 amid inflation and currency collapse. On January 30, 2026, the US Treasury sanctioned Zanjani. The United Kingdom has also imposed sanctions on him, though the exchanges themselves have not yet been directly targeted.

Zanjani has dismissed the US accusations on X as “merely a pretext for seizing 660 million Tether and extortion.” The exchanges and Bani did not respond to requests for comment.

New identity verification requirements for Companies House filings are scheduled to take effect in May 2026. Whether those reforms arrive in time to prevent the next phantom executive remains an open question.