Russian charged with laundering $4B in cryptocurrency scheme extradited from Greece

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) — A Russian man charged with cash laundering and operating a bootleg cryptocurrency alternate made his first look final week in a federal courtroom in San Francisco following his extradition from Greece. Alexander Vinnik, 42, was charged in a 21-count indictment in 2017 and shortly afterward authorities in Greece took him into custody on the request of the U.S. authorities, based on an announcement from the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace of the Northern District of California.

No further info was offered by prosecutors of their announcement concerning the five-year hole between Vinnik’s indictment and his first court docket look. In accordance with the indictment, Vinnik and his co-conspirators allegedly owned, operated, and administrated BTC-e, a major cybercrime and on-line cash laundering entity that allowed its customers to commerce in bitcoin with excessive ranges of anonymity and developed a buyer base closely reliant on legal exercise.

The indictment alleges BTC-e facilitated transactions for cybercriminals worldwide and obtained legal proceeds from quite a few pc intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, identification theft schemes, corrupt public officers, and narcotics distribution rings, and was used to facilitate crimes starting from pc hacking to fraud, identification theft, tax refund fraud schemes, public corruption, and drug trafficking.

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The operation laundered greater than $four billion, based on Assistant Lawyer Common Kenneth Well mannered Jr.

“This extradition demonstrates the Division’s dedication to investigating and dismantling illicit cyber exercise and wouldn’t have been doable with out the relentless work of the Justice Division’s Workplace of Worldwide Affairs,” Well mannered stated. “The Justice Division thanks the Authorities of Greece, notably the Ministry of Justice, for all their efforts in securing the defendant’s switch to the USA.”

The indictment expenses BTC-e and Vinnik with one depend of operation of an unlicensed cash service enterprise, and one depend of conspiracy to commit cash laundering. As well as, the indictment expenses Vinnik with 17 counts of cash laundering and two counts of participating in illegal financial transactions.