Natraymond
BOSTON (Reuters) – The founder of a cryptocurrency financial services company pleaded guilty on Friday to accusations of participating in a wide range of schemes to manipulate the market for digital tokens on behalf of client companies.
Cryptocurrency “Market Maker” Gotbit founder and CEO Aleksei Andriunin attended a guilty plea in federal court in Boston, accusing him of conspiring to commit market manipulation and wire fraud.
The petitions by the Russian citizens and his company came less than a month after the 26-year-old Andrinin was handed over from Portugal. There, he was arrested as part of an investigation into the crypto sector at his arrest in October.
They have been charged with 15 people and three companies following a new investigation called “Operation Token Mirrors.” The FBI was the first instructed to create their own digital tokens that would help catch scammers in the crypto market.
According to the deal in their pleas, prosecutors agreed to recommend Andrinin receive up to two years of prison when sentenced on June 16, prosecutors said. GoTbit has agreed to confiscate about $23 million in cryptocurrency.
Andriunin’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors said from 2018 to 2024, GOTBIT will work on behalf of several cryptocurrency clients in “wash trading,” a form of fake transactions, to help artificially inflate the volume of token trading.
The indictment cited an interview published online in 2019. This explained that Andrinin has developed a code to cleanse the codes to artificially inflate trade cryptocurrencies so that they can be listed and traded in larger cryptocurrency exchanges.
Prosecutors said Gotbit has a laundering trade worth millions of dollars and has received tens of millions of dollars in revenue for cryptocurrency services, including Saitama and Robo Inu. Individuals related to these cryptocurrencies are also being charged.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond of Boston, Edited by Bill Velcrott)