Alexander Vinnik, the former operator imprisoned from BTC-E Bitcoin Exchange, once powerful, is released from the American guard as part of an exchange of prisoners with Russia.
Vinnik, 44, is exchanged with the American professor imprisoned Marc Fogel, who returned to the United States last night after the negotiators made a surprise breakthrough with the Kremlin. It was not immediately clear which was on the other side of the agreement.
But BTC-E was one of the first exchanges that popularized the purchase and sale of the most popular digital assets in the world. It had more than a million customers and has moved more than $ 9 billion in transactions between 2011 and 2017.
His popularity has also favored a flourishing criminal subsoil which relied on him to move into and get out of the badly acquired bitcoin product, according to American prosecutors. They accused Vinnik of exploiting the BTC-E “with the intention of promoting” drug traffickers, launders and other cybercriminals, and caused the loss of $ 121 million.
Vinnik was arrested in Greece in 2017 and finally extradited in the United States, he pleaded guilty to a money laundering plot in 2024 and experienced a maximum of 20 years in prison.
His lawyers had previously been successful for his inclusion in other exchanges of high -level American prisoners from Russia, such as last year’s agreement against the former journalist of the Wall Street Journal, Evan Gershkovich.
