Topic: [2023-06-09] Russian Nationals Charged With Hacking One Cryptocurrency Exchange (Read 183 times)

Good point on the repetitive payments for nonexisting advertisements in return being evidence of complicity.

My vision of the transactions were that Bitcoins were being purchased at fenced discount rates, and kept.
You, however, opine that the fenced Bitcoins were purchased and resold by the same middleman.  I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah, if certain Bitcoin Foundation figures were aware of (if not complicit in) the hack, then they'd have yanked their funds out first.
(If they were sublimely clever, they'd have left them in to prove they were mutual victims, lol.)

Very interesting reply, thanks Greg!

Making no accusation, however I do find it "odd" that Roger was guts deep in Mt. Gox computers to help fix the June 2011 hack, and just three months later the larger hack began.

Was it ever definitely determined that the purloined wallet.dat file was taken from the outside?  Did Kim Nilsson figure that out?
I read something on sophos about the Mt. Gox hack being mostly an "inside job."

If you read the second indictment of the mtgox hacker and combine with the first it seems pretty obvious that Roger *knew* he was laundering money because he entered into that sham "advertising agreement" and kept making USD payments even though no advertising was being provided.  It's also pretty obviously laundering because of the tradehill references it appears the bulk of the coin that went in was just immediately sold for USD which went to the hacker.  So I don't think we even need to see that the trade was profitable for them, because it obviously would be (cause sure if they were just acquiring coins they might pay spot, but they were getting them, selling them, sending cash to the hacker's NZ accounts).

Perhaps he'll argue that he only thought he was laundering for "good" people.   ...  I'd love to see how the exact timeline of this worked out with against varrious Bitcoin Foundation figures pulling their funds off mtgox.

There was a September 2023 DHS report that mentioned this, but with some new developments on page 10:

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-09/08.%20Combatting%20Illicit%20Activity%20Phase%202_508_0.pdf


There are some X posts about this, wondering aloud if that's why the DoJ is really interested in Roger Ver.
https://x.com/KennethWRoyce1/status/1883730918155956719

Maybe BitInstant and Memory Dealers didn't know they were buying hacked Mt. Gox Bitcoin, but if they paid a lot less than spot then they should have been suspicious.  I'll be stocking up on popcorn to watch this unfold!

Any retrieved hacked Bitcoin should be added to the Mt. Gox restitution fund, but that's probably too much to expect.

I am actually amazed that the Russian judicial services are not pushing harder for the extradition, just to stick it to the US.   This will only become a political ball game between Russia and the USA.

I wonder how many Russians lost money in that hack and if he would got a bigger sentence, if he was trialed in Russia? There are many Russian hackers that are being used by the government to infiltrate systems in western countries, so they might even recruit him for that.  

In Russia he may have a new trial and his chances are from completely dropped charges (for example to spit in US "general direction") to even going to fight in the war.
But no, it's just a lawyer gimmick. I tend to believe that the lawyers knew that DOJ will refuse that before even asking.

I find it astonishing that he made such a request. Do we know what his sentence would be if he were sent in Russia?

I imagined that it would have been worse than in the United States, but it's true that 50 years is really violent. I wonder what he would risk, which kind of condemnation, if he pleaded guilty in the US?

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/russian-nationals-charged-hacking-one-cryptocurrency-exchange-and-illicitly-operating-another

"The Justice Department unsealed charges related to the 2011 hack of the cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox and the operation of the illicit cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e.

According to court documents, Alexey Bilyuchenko, 43, and Aleksandr Verner, 29, both Russian nationals, are charged with conspiring to launder approximately 647,000 bitcoins from their hack of Mt. Gox. Bilyuchenko is also charged with conspiring with Alexander Vinnik to operate BTC-e from 2011 to 2017."


https://bits.media/v-ssha-obvinili-dvukh-grazhdan-rossii-v-krazhe-bolee-600000-bitkoinov-s-kriptobirzhi-mt-gox/
"Recall that Ivanov, who was arrested in Novosibirsk, claims that the Russian Alexander Vinnik, who is now in an American prison, was behind the creation of BTC-e. According to Ivanov (who worked as a BTC-e technical administrator), Vinnik was responsible for the financial component of the criminal crypto exchange.

Alexander Vinnik was detained in July 2017 in Greece at the request of the US authorities. According to the US Department of Justice, Vinnik laundered billions of dollars for criminals through the BTC-e crypto exchange. After serving time in prisons in Greece and France, Vinnik was eventually extradited to the United States. On the charges, he can receive up to 50 years in prison. He does not admit his guilt. At the end of May, the media learned about the appeal of Vinnik's lawyers to exchange him for US citizens arrested in the Russian Federation. However, the exchange is unlikely, since the US Department of Justice is against his extradition to the Russian Federation."