The cryptocurrency exchange Wex, heir to the notorious trading platform run by alleged money launderer Alexander Vinnik, moved for the first time since 2017. His 10,000 Bitcoins in question, worth more than $165 million, were transferred to new addresses in several transactions.
The bitcoin stored in his dormant Wex wallet starts to move for the first time in five years.
The bitcoin wallet linked to the now defunct Wex unknown owner. 10,000 coins were withdrawn on the Russian-speaking market. Funds at this BTC address were last transferred in September 2017 when the same amount was transferred.
Wex was founded that year following the collapse of BTC-e. BTC-e shut down after one of its operators, his Alexander Vinnik, was arrested in Greece. A Russian IT specialist now in U.S. detention is accused of laundering up to $9 billion through exchanges.
Cryptocurrency exchanges were the first to notice digital currency transfers. Sergey Mendeleev, founder of Garantex and CEO of Indefibank, a defi banking platform. He revealed the discovery on his Telegram channel, according to a report from his outlet Bits.media, a leading Russian cryptocurrency news outlet. moved. Several transactions were made, including two presumably small test transfers, before sending
10,000 BTC. 3,500 BTC were transferred to his one address and 6,500 BTC were transferred to another. The address may have changed. The value of the withdrawn cryptocurrency is over $165 million in fiat currency equivalent at the time of writing.
Wex lost about $450 million when he went offline in 2018. The platform is seen as the successor to his BTC-e, which allegedly handled the money from the Mt Gox hack. and other cybercrime. It was operated by World Exchange Services, based in Singapore and co-founded by Aleksey Bilyuchenko, a former partner of BTC-e administrator Alexander Vinnik.
Vinnik was detained while on vacation in Thessaloniki in the summer of 2017. In addition to the United States, France and Russia also called for his extradition. In December 2019, Greek authorities extradited him to France, where (considering pretrial detention) he was found guilty of laundering money and he served a five-year sentence. Vinnik was then returned to Greece and quickly transferred to the United States where he now faces multiple charges.
In March of this year, Russian law enforcement detained a cryptocurrency entrepreneur suspected of being involved in an unidentified cryptocurrency exchange and embezzling funds and property. At the time, Sergei Mendeleev claimed that the arrested man was none other than Vilyuchenko. A BBC report revealed that he owned his Wex.
Another Wex co-owner and former CEO, Dmitry Vasiliev, was arrested in Poland in August 2021 and later released by Polish authorities before returning to Russia. In June 2022, he was also detained at the Zagreb airport upon entering Croatia on a red warrant issued by Interpol at the request of Kazakhstan, where he is wanted on fraud charges.
Last November, Mendeleev said he had failed to comply with a Wex user’s request that the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs help block and seize crypto assets that had been removed from exchange-managed wallets. clarified. At that time, nearly $46 million worth of his 10,000ETHor more was withdrawn and transferred to other platforms.
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