Gotbit founder Aleksei Andriunin, a 26-year-old Russian citizen, was handed over to the United States on Tuesday to be exposed to fraud who stammered from accusations that his company participated in a “broad conspiracy” to manipulate token awards to pay client-cryptocurrency companies, the US Justice Ministry said in a press release on Wednesday.
Andriunin was arrested in Portugal last October and then indicted by a Boston Grand Jury on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud, charges who have a total maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. The indictment also charged Gotbit himself as well as two of its directors, Fedor Kedrov and Qawi Jalili, both also of Russia.
Between 2018 and 2024, prosecutors say that Gotbit essentially provided market manipulation services for rent offering their token price infestation services to a number of crypto companies, including companies based in the USA
Andriunin was not shy about the nature of Gotbit’s services – in a 2019 interview with Coindesk, referred to in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Wednesday announcement, Andriunin, then another at Moscow State University, admitted mute that his business was “not completely ethical.”
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According to court documents, Gotbit received “tens of thousands of millions of dollars in proceeds” from their false activity. Andriunin is charged with “Transferr[ing] Millions of dollars of Gotbit’s revenue into his personal Binance account. “
Andriunin appeared a first performance for a Boston judge on Tuesday. His next hearing is not yet planned.
