Anatoly Legkodymov, the Russian co-founder of Hong Kong-registered virtual currency exchange Bitzlato, pleaded guilty to money laundering crimes in a New York court on Wednesday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Legkodymov was scheduled to appear in a Brooklyn courtroom before U.S. District Judge Eric Vitaliano at 2:30 p.m. ET for a “criminal cause for pleading,” Reuters reported earlier in the day.
“Legkodymov's guilty plea today confirms that he was well aware that Bitzlato, his cryptocurrency exchange, was being used like an open turnstile by criminals eager to take advantage of his lax controls over illicit money transactions,” stated United States Attorney Breon Peace. “The defendant may have thought he was operating from a safe haven overseas for his ‘No Questions Asked' clearinghouse, but this prosecution and conviction demonstrate otherwise.”
Legkodymov was arrested in Miami in January and charged with transmitting illicit funds. Bitzlato had been the largest counterparty of the now defunct Hydra darknet marketplace, whose users sent around $700 million worth of crypto through the exchange, according to the indictment.
Bitzlato also received more than $15 million in ransomware proceeds, the indictment said, alleging that Legkodymov and his team knew the exchange was used by criminals.
Money laundering concern
Along with Legkodymov, former Bitzlato CEO Mikhail Lunev, marketing director Alexander Goncharenko, contractor Pavel Lerner and an unnamed dev-ops engineer were arrested in several European countries, according to a co-founder, who has remained at large in Moscow and even touted plans to re-launch the platform.
Bitzlato was labeled a “primary money laundering concern” by the Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network earlier this year. French authorities seized Bitzlato infrastructure in January.
(Updates with statement from U.S. Attorney's Office.)