Alexander Vinnik, one of the individuals behind the BTC-e money laundering scheme and the Mt. Gox hack who’s currently waiting for his day in court, was the target of an assassination attempt in Greece.
“Greek law enforcement received intelligence on plans to prepare an assassination via poisoning with the help of criminals. The head of the prison and the prosecutor of the city of Thessaloniki summoned Vinnik and informed him about the plot to poison him, and special security measures were taken in connection with that,” said one anonymous source to Sputnik.
The prison where he is staying is now adopting a special security protocol to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. As for the identity of the person who attempted to murder him, sources claim that the attack was planned by an unknown Russian national.
“It all began after Vinnik’s extradition to the United States was blocked. There are people who are extremely interested in him not coming to Russia. The assassination was ordered by some unknown person from Russia,” the source continued.
This event proves that Alexander Vinnik wears quite a large target on his back, one that he cannot shake off. He is suspected of laundering anywhere between four and nine billion dollars through BTC-e.In addition to being wanted in the US for money laundering, he is also wanted in Russia on fraud charges.
The US Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network alleged that BTC-e assisted in financial crimes, giving the exchange a fine of $110 million. This worried people who stored their coins there as they believed it wouldn’t be able to pay them back their balances.
The exchange through which Vinnik laundered money has since been shut down, but not before it came back from the dead as “WEXnz” in the middle of September last year. The exchange went through several changes, including transferring its ownership, in order to be able to refund its users.
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