According to Forklog: BTC-e co-creator Alexander Vinnik, accused of laundering at least $4 billion, might plead guilty if U.S. prosecutors present solid evidence against him, according to his lawyer, Arkady Bukh. Bukh plans to request a postponement of the original court hearing scheduled for February next year, as he needs more time to study the extensive case materials.
Vinnik was arrested in Greece in 2017 and extradited to France in 2020, where he received a five-year prison sentence and a €100,000 fine in a money laundering case. He was extradited to the United States in August 2022. If convicted, Vinnik may face a 55-year prison sentence in the U.S., as his bail application has already been rejected.
Previously, the U.S. Department of Justice and federal prosecutors indicted Russian citizens Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner for their involvement in laundering approximately 647,000 bitcoins from the 2011 Mt. Gox hack. Bilyuchenko later founded the BTC-e exchange, using ill-gotten gains to provide money laundering services for global cybercriminals.
