A bitcoin money launderer, who prosecutors connected to the 2016 Russian interference in the U.S. election, has been released by Donald Trump in exchange for American school teacher Marc Fogel.
Alexander Vinnik, 42, a Russian citizen, was charged in a 21-count superseding indictment in January 2017 and taken into custody in Greece. He was later extradited to the U.S. On Wednesday, he was returned to Russia.
Vinnik was accused of running digital currency exchange BTC-e and committing money laundering through the site, which allegedly did business with drug dealers and identity thieves. Authorities said that the company had laundered more than $4 billion of criminal proceeds.
Prosecutors previously alleged that Vinnik may also have laundered money for Russian nation-state hackers, including the group Fancy Bear – which was found to have interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by hacking computers of top Democrats.
Prosecutors said that Vinnik ran the exchange where funds were used to finance the break-ins. He was not charged with election interference. Fancy Bear appeared to have laundered cryptocurrency through BTC-e, according to an investigation by digital forensics company Elliptic and the BBC.
After the alleged links were reported, Russia pushed harder for Vinnik to be returned to Russia, prompting some to suspect ties between his company and Russian state espionage.
According to the 2017 indictment, BTC-e was “a significant cybercrime and online money laundering entity that allowed its users to trade in bitcoin with high levels of anonymity and developed a customer base heavily reliant on criminal activity.”
Owned and operated by Vinnik and his co-conspirators, the company “facilitated transactions for cybercriminals worldwide and received criminal proceeds from numerous computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, identity theft schemes, corrupt public officials, and narcotics distribution rings.”
It was also used “to facilitate crimes ranging from computer hacking, to fraud, identity theft, tax refund fraud schemes, public corruption, and drug trafficking,” prosecutors alleged.
Before being brought to the U.S., Vinnik was extradited from Greece to France, where he was sentenced to five years in prison in 2020 for money laundering. He was extradited from France to the United States in 2022.
According to CNN, Vinnik had to forfeit money seized by the U.S. government as part of the exchange.
On Tuesday evening, Fogel, who had been held in Russian prison for three years on drug-related charges, returned to the U.S. After touching down he hailed the president as a “hero” and said he would be “forever indebted to him.”
The school teacher was arrested in August 2021, after he was caught traveling with 11 grams of medically prescribed marijuana, according to his family and friends. Eight grams of hash oil was reportedly also found in his luggage.
He was later sentenced to 14 years in prison in Russia in June 2022.
In a statement prior to his arrival in the U.S., the Fogel family also praised Trump’s “unwavering leadership.” “We are beyond grateful, relieved, and overwhelmed that after more than three years of detention, our father, husband, and son, Marc Fogel, is finally coming home.
“This has been the darkest and most painful period of our lives, but today, we begin to heal.”
