According to Odaily Planet Daily, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Alexander Vinnik, one of the former operators behind BTC-e, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to launder money on Friday. The Department of Justice said that Vinnik was the operator of BTC-e between 2011 and 2017, and the exchange handled more than 1 million users and more than $9 billion in trading volume during this period. BTC-e was related to the hacking of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox and was involved in the laundering of 300,000 bitcoins. BTC-e was closed in July 2017, at the same time as Vinnik's first arrest.
The Justice Department added that BTC-e was not registered as a money service business in the United States, did not implement any KYC or anti-money laundering rules, and did not collect any customer data. In addition, Vinnik used shell companies to process BTC-e's fiat currency exchanges. The press release stated that the exchange did receive funds from criminal activities including ransomware attacks, hacking and other schemes, and Vinnik was directly responsible for approximately $121 million in losses.