Owner of Bitcoin Exchange Sentenced to Prison for Money Laundering
A Bulgarian national who was convicted by a federal jury for his role in a transnational and multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud American victims was sentenced today to 121 months in prison.
Acting Assistant Attorney General David P. Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr. of the Eastern District of Kentucky, and Resident Agent in Charge John Oldham of the U.S. Secret Service made the announcement.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Weir sentenced Rossen G. Iossifov, 53, formerly of Bulgaria, for conspiracy to commit a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) offense and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
According to trial evidence, Iossifov owned and managed RG Coins, a cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria. According to the evidence at trial, Iossifov knowingly and intentionally engaged in business practices designed to both assist fraudsters in laundering the proceeds of their fraud and to shield himself from criminal liability. At least five of Iossifov’s principal clients in Bulgaria were Romanian scammers, who belonged to a criminal enterprise known in court records as the Alexandria (Romania) Online Auction Fraud (AOAF) Network.
More specifically, according to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Iossifov and his co-conspirators participated in a criminal conspiracy that engaged in a large-scale scheme of online auction fraud that victimized at least 900 Americans. Romania-based members of the conspiracy posted false advertisements to popular online auction and sales websites — such as craigslist and eBay — for high-cost goods (typically vehicles) that did not actually exist. Once victims were convinced to send payment, the conspiracy engaged in a complicated money laundering scheme wherein domestic associates would accept victim funds, convert these funds to cryptocurrency, and transfer proceeds in the form of cryptocurrency to foreign-based money launderers. Iossifov was one such foreign-based money launderer who facilitated this final step in the scheme.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/owner-bitcoin-exchange-sentenced-prison-money-launderingSo this guy was sentenced to 10 years for helping Bulgarian scammers laundered dirty money thru the exchange that he has established. And he himself make money out of it amounting to $200k. The other co-conspirators have been sentence as well but some remain at large. And according to the documents as well, they duped at least 900 Americans, close to $7 million, hence the heavy penalty. It was a joint effort in the part of US, Romania and Bulgaria.