Two Russians have been charged with stealing millions of dollars from defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. .
Alexey Bilyuchenko, 43, and Alexander Werner, 29, were charged with conspiring to launder approximately 647,000 bitcoins from the Mt Gox hack in 2011. Bilyuchenko is also charged with conspiring with Alexander Vinnik to operate BTC-e from 2011 to 2017.
Bilyuchenko, Varner, and their co-conspirators allegedly compromised Mt. Gox’s servers to access bitcoin and laundered cryptocurrencies through two other online bitcoin exchanges.
Read more about Mt Gox’s story: Online currency Bitcoin loses most of its value due to exchange hack.
The pair also allegedly used an advertising deal with bitcoin brokerage service New York Bitcoin Brokers to launder more money by asking the latter to send wire transfers to offshore accounts in the name of a dummy company. being held
Bitcoin brokers in New York are believed to have transferred about $6.6 million in this manner between 2012 and 2013.
Mt Gox was forced into a trading suspension in 2014 after a long-running theft scandal came to light.
However, Bilyuchenko is said to have worked with Vinnik and others to operate the BTC-e exchange from 2011 until it was shut down by authorities in July 2017. The exchange serves over one million users worldwide and has helped launder money for cybercriminals, drug cartels and corrupt organizations. Civil servants and others, according to the Department of Justice (DoJ).
Vinnik was arrested in Greece a few years ago, detained in France on money laundering charges and is currently awaiting trial in California on charges of running BTC-e. He is also believed to have contributed to the development of the Locky ransomware variant.
It’s unclear where Bilyuchenko and Werner currently live, but if they’re based in Russia, they’re unlikely to face trial.
