On July 25, 2019, United States prosecutors filed a complaint against the defunct cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e and its alleged former operator, Alexander Vinnik. The indictment was filed nearly 24 months after Vinnik was arrested in Greece while on holiday with his family and has followed numerous extradition requests from the U.S., France and Russia that have seen Vinnik’s case appear to morph from an investigation into alleged money laundering to a tug-of-war over a strategic intelligence asset between the U.S. and Russia.
On July 26, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Vinnik had been arrested two days prior in Greece for allegedly taking part in the operations of the shadowy cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e. The Russian citizen, who is now 39 years old, was described as the mastermind behind an international money-laundering scheme that had processed over $4 billion worth of capital flows, including approximately 300,000 Bitcoins (BTC) that had been stolen from now-defunct crypto exchange Mt.Gox.