May 4 (UPI) — High-profile Russian cryptocurrency player Alexander Vinnick has pleaded guilty to U.S. charges of conspiring to launder more than $9 billion as one of the operators of the BTC-e exchange.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Vinnick’s guilty plea on Friday.
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“Today’s result shows how the Justice Department, working with international partners, reaches across the globe to combat crypto crime,” Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
Monaco said Vinnick’s guilty plea demonstrates the DOJ’s “ongoing commitment to use all tools to fight money laundering, police crypto markets and recover restitution for victims.”
Vinnick, 44, is a Russian citizen who was among the operators of BTC-e from 2011 to 2017, which the DOJ says was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
The exchange primarily operated in the Russian market but had servers located in the United States. The DOJ says BTC-e was one of the primary ways in which cyber criminals in locations around the world transferred, laundered and stored records of their ill-gotten gains.
Vinnick admitted to helping launder more than $9 billion and inflicting at least $121 million in losses on victims of online criminal activities from 2011 until his arrest in 2017, at which time the DOJ shut down BTC-e.
BTC-e received proceeds from criminal activities that included computer hacking, ransomware, identity theft, political corruption and narcotics distribution, U.S. officials said.
“Vinnick operated BTC-e with the intent to promote these unlawful activities,” the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs said Friday.
He was arrested in Greece, and officials in the United States, Russia and France sought his extradition, CoinDesk reported.
BTC-e wasn’t registered to provide money services in the United States and had no anti-money laundering processes or transparency in violation of federal law.
“BTC-e collected virtually no customer data at all,” the DOJ said, “which made the exchange attractive to those who desired to conceal criminal proceeds from law enforcement.”
Authorities said the exchange used shell companies and affiliated entities that also weren’t registered to do business in the United States to conceal its activities.
The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in 2017 fined BTC-e $110 million and Vinnick $12 million for the federal law violations.
