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 (pictured above) to run the laundromat BTC-e between 2011 and 2017.
According to court documents unsealed in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), in or about September 2011, Bilyuchenko, Verner, and their co-conspirators allegedly gained unauthorized access to the server holding the crypto wallets for Mt. Gox. At the time, Mt. Gox was the largest Bitcoin exchange in existence, servicing thousands of users worldwide. Mt. Gox stored the cryptocurrency wallets containing its customers’ bitcoin, and the corresponding private keys used to authorize bitcoin transfers from those wallets, on a computer server in Japan.
According to court documents unsealed in the Northern District of California (NDCA), Bilyuchenko allegedly worked with Alexander Vinnik and others to operate the BTC-e exchange from 2011 until it was shut down by law enforcement in July 2017. During that time period, BTC-e was one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges and was one of the primary ways by which cyber criminals around the world transferred, laundered, and stored the criminal proceeds of their illegal activities.
BTC-e served over one million users worldwide, moving millions of bitcoin worth of deposits and withdrawals, and processing billions of dollars’ worth of transactions. BTC-e received criminal proceeds from numerous computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware events, identity theft schemes, corrupt public officials, and narcotics distribution rings.
As reported by FinTelegram, Alexander Vinnik wants to return to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Evan Gershkovich.
