After years of extradition debates, Bitcoin (BTC) launderer Alexander Vinnik has lastly been sentenced by a French court docket.Based on a Dec. 7 r
After years of extradition debates, Bitcoin (BTC) launderer Alexander Vinnik has lastly been sentenced by a French court docket.
Based on a Dec. 7 report by Novaya Gazeta, Vinnik has been sentenced to 5 years in jail for “cash laundering as a part of an organized felony group and offering false details about the origin of the proceeds” along with a superb of 100,000 euro ($121,000).
Based on the BBC, the court docket partially dropped fees associated to the ransomware referred to as Locky. At publishing time, on-line reviews don’t specify whether or not Vinnik’s sentence is said to his alleged senior function at now-defunct crypto change BTC-e.
Vinnik beforehand denied his involvement at BTC-e, reportedly claiming that he was simply an worker. He stated that his month-to-month wage at BTC-e amounted to 10,000 euro.
As beforehand reported, Vinnik is allegedly the mastermind behind a world money-laundering scheme that had processed over $four billion price of capital flows by means of BTC-e.
Colloquially referred to as “Mr. Bitcoin,” Vinnik was first arrested in Greece in July 2017 for allegedly participating within the operations of BTC-e. For the reason that arrest, numerous jurisdictions have sought Vinnik’s extradition, together with the USA and Russia, the place Vinnik is a citizen. Vinnik was extradited to France in 2018 on fees of fraud and cash laundering.
In June 2020, the New Zealand police reportedly recovered $90 million related to the case in opposition to Vinnik.