WEX (formerly BTC-e)

History

2024:5 billion rubles from the administrator of the Wex crypto exchange. Record bribe recorded to an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation

On April 16, 2024, it became known that Georgy Satyukov, an employee of the Bureau of Special Technical Measures (BSTM) as part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, is accused of receiving a record bribe for this department. According to investigators, we are talking about an amount of almost 5 billion rubles - this money came from the administrator of one of the cryptocurrency exchanges. Read more here.

2023: Disclosure of partners in the development of the WEX exchange and their criminal cases

In October 2023, a podcast with investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov, specializing in the investigation of cryptomaphia, was published in the Ukrainian edition of Peduza.

According to him, after moving to Russia, the co-founder of BTC-e Bilyuchenko created a new exchange - WEX. Then the exchange allegedly "took the people of Konstantin Malofeev." The money was gone again. One of the depositors of the exchange staged an epidemic of mass mining, demanding to return the money to him ("the WEX case affected every Russian"). Bilyuchenko ended up in prison.

But that's not all. In 2019, working in RBC magazine, Zakharov received a letter from a source. He met with him in the SPB and handed over the materials of the Bilyuchenko case. A few years later, Zakharov realized that his source was a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Sokolov. He allegedly "covered" Bilyuchenko and gave Zakharov information about his case in order to set up the journalist in a certain way. In 2023, Sokolov himself is involved in the Bilyuchenko case and a VIP apartment in St. Petersburg was arrested from him. Zakharov decided that although it was not good to disclose the source, in view of public interest, he would do it.

2022

The case of embezzlement of more than 3 billion rubles from the WEX crypto exchange was transferred from Novosibirsk to Moscow

On July 21, 2023, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation granted the request of the administrator cryptoexchanges WEX Alexey Ivanov and his defenders to change the territorial jurisdiction and transfer the criminal case for consideration to the Meshchansky District Court. Moscow More. here

Transfer from the wallet of the exchange 10 thousand bitcoins

10,000 bitcoins were unexpectedly transferred from the "sleeping" wallet of the BTC-e exchange that collapsed in 2017 in November 2022. This is about $165 million. It was believed that the keys to the wallet were lost, since the exchange closed in the summer of 2017.

Some of the withdrawn bitcoins were distributed into a number of anonymous wallets, which is very similar to an attempt to launder money. The BTC-e exchange is associated with the Russian Alexander Vinnik, who was arrested in 2017. He is suspected of laundering $4 billion through a crypt.

Arrest of former director Dmitry Vasiliev

At the end of May 2022, it became known about the next arrest of Dmitry Vasiliev. This time, the former director of the largest Russian cryptocurrency exchange Wex (formerly known as BTC-e) was detained at the airport in Croatian Zagreb, where he flew from Barcelona, ​ ​ where his mother lives. The businessman was taken into custody on the basis of a warrant issued by Interpol at the request of Kazakhstan in a fraud case for $20 thousand. Read more here.

2020: BTC-e founder Alexander Vinnik received 5 years in prison for money laundering through the exchange

On December 7, 2020, the Paris court sentenced Alexander Vinnik to five years in prison and a fine of 100 thousand euros for extortion and money laundering through the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange he founded. Prosecutors demanded 10 years in prison and payment of 750 thousand euros. The Russian himself pleaded not guilty. Read more here.

2017

Clients of the BTC-e exchange organized harassment of the owner of the MoneyPolo payment system Sergey Mayzus

Alexander Vinnik was a client of Mayzus Financial Services, the operator of the MoneyPolo payment system, through which, among other things, Alexander Vinnik accepted payments from clients of the BTC-e exchange.

Immediately after the arrest of Alexander Vinnik, the BTC-e exchange was terminated by US law enforcement agencies - the exchange's servers, as well as the domain, were seized BTC-e.com.

Numerous exchange clients who lost their funds organized a real persecution of the family of the owner of the MoneyPolo payment system, Russian Sergei Mayzus.

Thus, members of his family began to receive threats from unknown persons through accounts in social networks, on public forums on the Internet, as well as by phone. The network contained personal data of his relatives and family members, photographs, addresses, firms and real estate.

Ultimately, one of the historical castles in the Czech Republic, owned by Sergei Mayzus, was burned down by unknown intruders.

In addition, as reported by the Nezygar telegram channel, the organized persecution was actively supported by Alexander Vinnik's lawyer, Timofey Musatov, who in his public statements actually "translated the arrows" from the arrested Vinnik to Mayzus.

The persecution forced the owner of the payment system to file a lawsuit with the Limassol District Court to recover damage from Alexander Vinnik and the group of companies that ensured the operation of the BTC-e exchange.

On February 1, 2019, the Limassol District Court satisfied the claim of Sergei Mayzus and recognized the defendants as participants in a conspiracy to defraud and launder funds.

In addition, documents were submitted to the court disclosing the ultimate beneficiaries of the BTC-e exchange, to whose accounts in banks in Australia and the Russian Federation all funds were withdrawn from the accounts of companies operating the BTC-e exchange.

Arrest of the founder of the exchange Alexander Vinnik

In October 2023, a podcast with investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov, specializing in the investigation of cryptomaphia, was published in the Ukrainian edition of Peduza. In particular, he spoke about the BTC'e crypto exchange created by Alexander Vinnik and Alexander Bilyuchenko. In July 2017, they were vacationing together in Greece and Vinnik's wife went in with his SIM card on Instagram.

Vinnik was arrested on July 25 at the request of the United States. He was suspected of creating a BTC-e crypto exchange and laundering $4 billion through it. In addition to the United States and France, the extradition of the Russian was sought at home (in 2018 he confessed to embezzlement of 750 million rubles). Vinnik said he wanted "voluntary" extradition to Russia.

Bilyuchenko managed to break the laptop on the rocks and escape to Russia.

The money of the exchange's users disappeared (its daily turnover was tens of millions of dollars).