The Russian nationwide who’s going through crypto-related costs within the Northern District Court docket of California is reportedly being extradited from Greece to the US.
Alexander Vinnik is named the operator of BTC-e, a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency trade with alleged ties to felony organizations.
Vinnik is accused of laundering funds from the notorious hack of the now-defunct digital asset trade Mt. Gox by means of varied exchanges, together with BTC-e.
Vinnik was arrested in Greece in 2017 and extradited to France, the place he was sentenced to 5 years in jail for cash laundering. America and Russia each filed extradition requests from Greece, however the US is getting custody of Vinnik based mostly on current developments.
Citing Frédéric Bélot, Vinnik’s lawyer in France, CNN studies that the accused is already onboard a aircraft from Athens, Greece to the US as of Thursday afternoon and may have an preliminary court docket look within the Northern District of California.
Vinnik additionally co-founded BTC-e’s successor Wex, which reportedly handed $450 million value of traders’ crypto belongings to Russia’s intelligence company, the Federal Safety Service (FSB).
Says then chief of Inner Income Service’s Legal Investigation (CI) Division Don Fort when Vinnik and BTC-e had been indicted in 2017,
“Mr. Vinnik is alleged to have dedicated and facilitated a variety of crimes that go far past the shortage of regulation of the Bitcoin trade he operated. By means of his actions, it’s alleged that he stole identities, facilitated drug trafficking, and helped to launder felony proceeds from syndicates around the globe.”
Exchanges like this usually are not solely unlawful, however they’re a breeding floor for stolen id refund fraud schemes and different forms of tax fraud. When there isn’t a regulation and criminals are left unchecked, this state of affairs is all too widespread. The takedown of this huge digital foreign money trade ought to ship a powerful message to cyber-criminals and different unregulated exchanges throughout the globe.”
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