{"id":77324,"date":"2023-04-17T12:56:17","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T09:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=77324"},"modified":"2025-09-10T22:39:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T19:39:55","slug":"journalists-report-possible-deal-between-bitzlato-founder-and-prosecutors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/journalists-report-possible-deal-between-bitzlato-founder-and-prosecutors\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalists report possible deal between Bitzlato founder and prosecutors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The founder of the Bitzlato cryptocurrency exchange, Anatoly Legkodymov, who is under arrest in the United States, intends to plead guilty and strike a deal with prosecutors. This is reported by the Telegram channel <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/bazabazon\/16973\">Baza<\/a> citing court documents.<\/p>\n<p>The documents indicate that the parties are currently negotiating a guilty plea, which, in their view, could resolve the case without going to trial.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI accuses the Russian national of &#8220;running a money-transfer business not registered in the United States, linked to non-compliance with anti-money-laundering laws&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators believe that the founder knew about the illicit origin of the funds, but deliberately continued operations and neglected <span data-descr=\"Know Your Customer\" class=\"old_tooltip\">KYC<\/span>\/<span data-descr=\"anti-money-laundering\" class=\"old_tooltip\">AML<\/span>-procedures.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/gendalf.baza.io\/\">\u043f\u0440\u0435\u0434\u043f\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0436\u0435\u043d\u0438\u044e<\/a>, Baza, Legkodymov&#8217;s arrival in the United States could have been part of a deal with the FBI, as the total potential prison term for the charges does not exceed five years.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-text-wrappers-update-2 article_update\"><time class=\"gtb_text-wrappers_update_time\">April 19, 2023 | 11:22<\/time><span class=\"gtb_text-wrappers_update_head\">Update: <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>On January 17, the US Department of Justice arrested the founder of Bitzlato, Anatoly Legkodymov, on charges of laundering $700 million related to the dark-net marketplace Hydra. A day later, the service&#8217;s operation was suspended.<\/p>\n<p>Later, it became known of the arrest of former chief executive Mikhail Lunyev, marketing manager Alexander Goncharenko, Monolithos DAO implementation contractor Pavel Lerner, and the platform&#8217;s system administrator.<\/p>\n<p>As ForkLog lawyers later stated, all those arrested were not part of the team, but were either contractors or consultants; some of them had never participated in the company&#8217;s core activities.<\/p>\n<p>According to Europol, the exchange converted assets tied to criminal activity totaling around \u20ac1 billion ($1.08 billion).<\/p>\n<p>Since March 20, Bitzlato web version and app users have gained access to partial withdrawals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The founder of the Bitzlato cryptocurrency exchange, Anatoly Legkodymov, who is under arrest in the United States, intends to plead guilty and strike a deal with prosecutors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1635,1162,1257,26],"class_list":["post-77324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-bitzlato","tag-court-cases","tag-currency-exchanges","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"30","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77326,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77324\/revisions\/77326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}