The Trump administration has released Alexander Vinnik, a cybercriminal who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, to Russia, as part of an exchange that freed American schoolteacher Marc Fogel on Tuesday.
The charges against him included money laundering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money service business and engaging in unlawful monetary transactions, among others.
US prosecutors said that the exchange was one of the “primary ways by which cyber criminals around the world transferred, laundered, and stored the criminal proceeds of their illegal activities” and accused Vinnik of operating the company with the intent to “promote” unlawful activities.
Vinnik, who arrived in Moscow on a flight from Turkey on Tuesday after having been released from custody in California, is accused of owning and operating one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, BTC-e, which prosecutors allege facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars in transactions for criminals worldwide.
The justice department described BTC-e, which was active from around 2011 to 2017, as a “significant cybercrime and online money laundering entity that allowed its users to trade in bitcoin with high levels of anonymity and developed a customer base heavily reliant on criminal activity”.
