U.S. authorities have filed a motion aiming to take hold of the coins held in the wallets of the once-largest Russian cryptocurrency exchange, BTC-e.
America’s justice department hopes to forfeit the digital money of the trading platform, which processed funds originating from all sorts of criminal activities.
DOJ wants BTC-e’s cryptocurrency
The U.S. Department of Justice is attempting to establish control over BTC-e’s crypto holdings as of the time the exchange collapsed, July 2017, Russian crypto media has learned.
The DOJ has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, seeking the forfeiture of the cryptocurrency in the wallets of the now-defunct exchange.
It’s demanding that digital and other assets, allegedly used in illegal activities, be transferred to the custody of the U.S. government, leading Russian crypto news outlet Bits.media reported Friday.
The lawsuit, which was initiated at the end of June, cites various provisions of the United States’ civil asset forfeiture law.
It also highlights that BTC-e facilitated operations related to money laundering, cyber fraud, and ransomware attacks, as well as transactions linked to darknet markets.
The DOJ is targeting crypto assets held in the platform’s wallets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and other digital currencies.
As this is a civil lawsuit, the government will be able to claim property associated with illegal activity, regardless of whether criminal charges have been brought against specific individuals.
Any other persons, individuals, or legal entities who believed they were in a position to claim their share of BTC-e’s assets could do that by Sept. 2.
A 60-day window for submitting such claims, which started with the official notice announcing the commencement of the case, expired on that date.
Long story of BTC-e continues to unfold
At its apogee, BTC-e was the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the Russian segment of the market, suspected by U.S. authorities of having laundered up to $9 billion of illicit money.
It ceased operations in the summer of 2017, when one of its co-founders and alleged operators, Russian entrepreneur Alexander Vinnik, was arrested. He was initially detained in the Greek city of Thessaloniki while on vacation with his family.
Vinnik was later extradited to France, where he was sentenced to five years in prison in December 2020, and eventually handed over to the United States in 2022, where he pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in 2024.
The current administration of President Donald Trump exchanged the Russian in an arranged prisoner swap with Moscow for American schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who had been held in a Russian prison since 2021 under a 14-year sentence for carrying cannabis in his baggage.
However, U.S. authorities never lost interest in the activities of BTC-e. It had servers in the United States, allowing them to seize its website, and suspected ties to Russia’s security services.
Earlier in October, the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, which is close to the Russian security forces, revealed, quoted by Bits.media, that 6,500 BTC, worth around $694 million at the time, had been withdrawn from a wallet linked to Alexey Bilyuchenko, another co-founder and administrator of BTC-e.
Bilyuchenko was also involved in the operation of Wex, the successor of BTC-e, which was established after Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev took over the exchange. He allegedly used BTC-e funds to finance the pro-Russian side in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.
Wex is also now out of business, but the hunt for its executives continues. In late 2024, its former head, Dmitry Vasiliev, was arrested in Warsaw. In June, news came out that Polish authorities had agreed to hand him over to the United States, as reported by Cryptopolitan.