Providing an answer to one of the biggest mysteries in the crypto world, the Department of Justice revealed the identity of two Russian hackers they say were behind the Mt. Gox bitcoin heist a decade ago — one of the biggest such thefts in history.
A federal judge in New York unsealed an indictment this week that named Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner as the men responsible for the hack that drained 674,000 bitcoin from Japan’s Mt. Gox exchange between 2011 and 2014.
The theft would result in the abrupt collapse of the bitcoin exchange in 2014. At the time. Mt. Gox handled approximately 70% of all bitcoin transactions in the world, making it, by far, the largest such exchange in the world. In 2014, the bitcoin
BTCUSD,
stolen from customer accounts was worth some $474 million, but would be valued at $17.9 billion at current rates.
Federal prosecutors say the men managed to gain access to Mt. Gox’s systems in 2011 and over the next three years, somehow managed to drain the exchange of huge amounts of its customer accounts unnoticed.
The men allegedly moved the bitcoin into accounts they controlled and then engaged in an elaborate effort to launder the proceeds, involving advertising contracts with other cryptocurrency operations that allowed them to make the movement of the money appear legitimate.
Bilyuchenko, 43, and Verner, 29, were indicted by a grand jury back in 2019 but the case remained sealed until earlier this week, according to court records. Prosecutors say both men remain at large and are believed to be residing overseas. They could not immediately be reached for comment.
Bilyuchenko was also separately charged in federal court in northern California for allegedly helping run another, now-defunct, crypto exchange called BTC-e which was notorious as a way for cyber criminals around the world to move and launder their proceeds. Prosecutors say billions of dollars was moved through the exchange, much of it the result of computer hacking, ransomware attacks, identity theft schemes and drug dealing.
Prosecutors say some of the money stolen from Mt. Gox was laundered through the BTC-e exchange
BTC-e was shut down in 2017 when its co-founder, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested in Greece on money laundering charges. He was extradited to the U.S. in 2022 and is awaiting trial. A message left with Vinnik’s attorney wasn’t immediately returned.
In 2019, the BBC reported that Bilyuchenko narrowly avoided being arrested in Greece along with Vinnik, but managed to escape after getting a tip from his alleged co-conspirator’s mother that the authorities had swooped in. He then smashed his laptop, through it into the sea and got a flight back to Moscow.
The report said Bilyuchenko then started another exchange called Wex after getting backing from sanctioned Russian nationalist billionaire, Konstantin Malofeyev, but lost control of it in what may have been a scam.
In 2022, Russian media reported that Bilyuchenko had been arrested by Russian authorities on charges of stealing from a crypto exchange.
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