BTC-e Operator Pleads Guilty

Reuters

Hey folks.

One of the operators behind the former BTC-e crypto exchange, Alexander Vinnik, entered a guilty plea on Friday to a charge of planning to launder money, according to the US Department of Justice.

According to Department of Justice, between 2011 and 2017 Vinnik was an operator at BTC-e and more than one million users transacting above $9 billion in cryptocurrency during that time was processed by the exchange.

After being used to launder about $300,000 (BTC) from the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, BTC-e was connected to the hack of that platform. In July 2017, BTC-e was shut down concurrently with Vinnik's initial arrest.

Vinnik faced a lengthy extradition while he was arrested in Greece, with the authorities of Russia, French and United States trying to convince Greece to send Vinnik to their respective countries. After securing Vinnik's extradition and sentencing him to five years in jail, France eventually secured Vinnik's extradition to the United States.

Vinnik in the start denied that he was the operator at BTC-e stating he was only an employee at the exchange.

According to Department of Justice stated on Friday, BTC-e didn't register as a money services Business in the United States, didn't operate any money laundering or KYC rules and didn't collect any data. Shell companies were used by Vinnik to process fiat conversions for BTC-e.

The press announcement stated that Vinnik was directly in charge of almost $121 million in damages and that the exchange did indeed accept money from illegal activities such as ransomware attacks, hacking, and other scams.

Follow @haveyoursay

x.com/itshaveyoursay

Posted Using InLeo Alpha