ChainCatcher news, according to Protos, Russia is using Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan in exchange for some Russians held by the U.S. and its allies, including Alexander Vinnik, the founder of the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange.Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan were taken to a location outside of Russia yesterday. According to Business Insider citing TASS, Vinnik and others will be sent in another direction, and their names have been removed from the FBI's electronic database.It is reported that in May of this year, Vinnik pleaded guilty during his time at BTC-e, admitting to conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is responsible for approximately $121 million in losses and encouraged criminals to use the platform to launder and store illegal proceeds. Gershkovich and Whelan were arrested in March 2023 and December 2020, respectively, on espionage charges, but the U.S. denies these allegations.

ChainCatcher News: The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Alexander Vinnik, one of the operators behind BTC-e, pleaded guilty on Friday to charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Department of Justice stated that Vinnik was an operator of BTC-e from 2011 to 2017, during which the exchange processed over 1 million users and transactions exceeding $9 billion.BTC-e was linked to the hack of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, which was involved in laundering 300,000 bitcoins. BTC-e was shut down in July 2017, at which time Vinnik was arrested for the first time.The Department of Justice added that BTC-e was not registered as a money services business in the U.S., did not implement any KYC or anti-money laundering rules, and did not collect any customer data. Additionally, Vinnik used shell companies to handle BTC-e's fiat currency exchanges.The press release stated that the exchange did indeed obtain funds from criminal activities, including ransomware attacks, hacks, and other schemes, with Vinnik being directly responsible for approximately $121 million in losses.

ChainCatcher news, the U.S. Department of Justice has announced the arrest of Aliaksandr Klimenka, the mastermind behind the trading platform BTC-e, which has been shut down for several years, in Latvia. He is accused of participating in money laundering related to criminal activities from 2011 to 2017, with an amount involved exceeding $4 billion.

ChainCatcher news, BTC-e co-founder Alexander Vinnik has been accused of laundering at least $4 billion through BTC-e. His lawyer Arkady Bukh revealed that if the evidence against Vinnik is conclusive, he may plead guilty.Arkady Bukh stated, "If the materials show that everything is very bad and the chances of winning are low, then we will talk about a guilty plea. If we believe the evidence is weak, we will go for a jury trial."The lawyer will request to postpone the court hearing originally scheduled for February next year, as he does not have sufficient time to review "hundreds of thousands of pages" of case materials.Alexander Vinnik was detained in Greece in the summer of 2017, extradited to France in 2020, and later sentenced to five years in prison and fined €100,000 for money laundering in France. In August 2022, Vinnik was extradited to the United States, where he could face up to 55 years in prison if convicted, and the court previously denied his bail application.

ChainCatcher news reports that on-chain data shows that over the past two weeks, BTC assets from the defunct BTC-e trading platform have been moving on-chain. Initially, an anonymous wallet address was detected receiving 3,299 BTC from a BTC-e address in November 2022, marking the first transaction sent from the BTC-e wallet address since 2017. Subsequently, this address sent 10,000 bitcoins (approximately $165 million) to two unidentified recipients.On March 14 of this year, one of the recipient addresses began transferring funds again. According to blockchain analysis firm Crystal Blockchain, it was confirmed to the Russian crypto site Forklog that a small portion of the 3,299 BTC (a total of 3.75 BTC) has been sent to the trading platforms KuCoin and MEXC, as well as to an OTC platform named BTC2pm.It is reported that U.S. law enforcement shut down BTC-e in 2017 and arrested the platform's operator, Alexander Vinnik, at a resort near Thessaloniki, Greece, charging him with crimes including money laundering. After serving time in a Greek prison, Vinnik was transferred to France for trial and ultimately extradited to the U.S., facing multiple charges. According to court documents, Vinnik is currently held at the Santa Rita Jail in California. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, Google had previously lost BTC-e related data requested by the Department of Justice and has now committed to improving its legal compliance program. According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday, Google will "ensure timely and complete responses to legal processes such as subpoenas and search warrants."It is reported that BTC-e was a criminal cryptocurrency exchange that was investigated and shut down by the FBI in 2017 for alleged money laundering. The Department of Justice had issued a search warrant to Google in 2016, requesting data related to BTC-e that it held, but Google had previously followed a long-standing legal precedent, believing that the data submitted was stored on U.S. soil rather than in the cloud, and did not fulfill the request in a timely manner after a disagreement with the Department of Justice regarding the definition of the data.Later, Congress ultimately intervened by passing the CLOUD Act, which requires that all relevant data in cases like Google's must be submitted, regardless of where the data is stored. Google signed a letter in 2018 praising the act for clarifying the company's obligations, but the data originally requested by the Department of Justice has already been lost. (source link)