Tag: BTC-e

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has unveiled charges against a Belarusian and Cypriot national, Aliaksandr Klimenka, 42, for his involvement in a global money laundering conspiracy and operating BTC-e, an unlicensed digital currency exchange. Klimenka was arrested in Latvia on December and made his initial court appearance in San Francisco. If convicted, Klimenka faces up to 25 years in prison.

Before Western sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine invasion began in February 2022, U.S. authorities were cracking down on the Russian crypto scene. Since the beginning of the new sanctions in 2022, the American approach against the Russian crypto scene, which is under general suspicion of money laundering and sanctions violations, has intensified and is bringing charges against Russian crypto schemes and their masterminds.

Russian Sergey Mayzus is a notorious entrepreneur in high-risk payment and online trading. He founded the now CySEC-regulated broker InstaForex in Russia in 2007, which has had many regulatory problems. The UK FCA revoked his Mayzus Financial Services Ltd license as a payment processor in 2018. Mazyos was allegedly involved in Alexander Vinnik's Russian collapsed crypto exchange BTC-e as a payment processor. Mayzus seems to have legal issues in the Czech Republic.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has revealed charges linked to the collapsed crypto exchanges Mt. Gox and BTC-e. Two Russian nationals, Alexey Bilyuchenko (43) and Aleksandr Verner (29), are accused of conspiring to launder approximately 647,000 bitcoins obtained through a Mt. Gox hack. Bilyuchenko is additionally charged with conspiring with Alexander Vinnik to run the laundromat BTC-e between 2011 and 2017.

Alexander Vinnik, 43, the Russian co-founder of bitcoin exchange BTC-e, was arrested in Greece in 2017 on U.S. money-laundering charges and later extradited. He is facing U.S. money-laundering charges and allegedly laundered more than $4 billion of criminal proceeds via BTC-e. Vinnik pleaded not guilty and could be included in a prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia that could free detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

It is a complicated international case! In January 2017, U.S. prosecutors indicted the Russian Alexander Vinnik charging him with money laundering, computer hacking, and drug trafficking. Vinnik was the operator of the illicit crypto exchange BTC-e and allegedly laundered more than $4 billion in bitcoin connected o cybercrime, drug trafficking, public corruption, and tax refund fraud schemes. In July 2017, Vinnik was arrested in Greece and was extradited to the United States on 4 August 2022.

The Russian Alexander VINNIK was indicted by U.S. authorities in July 2017 charging with money laundering, computer hacking, and...