BOSTON — A Russian national living in Portugal has been extradited to the U.S. for his role in “a wide-ranging conspiracy” to manipulate markets for paying client cryptocurrency companies, the U.S. Attorney said Wednesday.
Aleksei Andriunin, 26, was arrested in Portugal on Oct. 8, 2024 and extradited to the United States on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in a statement.
Andriunin appeared in federal court in Boston on Wednesday. He was ordered detained pending a hearing to be scheduled at a later date.
On Oct. 31, 2024, Andriunin was indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud, Foley said.
The indictment also charges Gotbit and two of its directors, Fedor Kedrov and Qawi Jalili.
According to court documents, Gotbit was a well-known “market maker” in the cryptocurrency industry.
Prosecutors allege that between 2018 and 2024, Gotbit provided market manipulation services to “create artificial trading volume for multiple cryptocurrency companies,” including U.S. companies. Andriunin was Gotbit’s founder and CEO.
In a 2019 interview, prosecutors allege Andriunin described how he developed a code to “wash trade” cryptocurrencies to artificially inflate trading volume, in order to get cryptocurrencies listed on CoinMarketCap. That website published information about “trending” cryptocurrencies, and trading on larger cryptocurrency exchanges.
Andriunin and Gotbit’s employees, including Jalili, who worked as Gotbit’s sales director, and Kedrov, who worked as Gotbit’s director of market making), allegedly marketed these wash trading tactics to prospective clients. They allegedly “explained how Gotbit used multiple accounts to avoid detection of the wash trades on the public blockchain,” prosecutors said.
“Gotbit allegedly made wash trades worth millions of dollars on behalf of clients and received tens of millions of dollars in proceeds in connection with these fraudulent services,” the U.S. Attorney’s statement said.
Andriunin allegedly transferred millions of dollars of Gotbit’s proceeds into his personal Binance account.
If convicted of wire fraud, Andriunin faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense, restitution and forfeiture.
If convicted of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud, Andriunin faces a sentence of up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000 to twice the gross gain or loss from the offense, restitution and forfeiture.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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