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American security forces have detained Anatoly Legkodymov, the founder of the Bitzlato cryptocurrency exchange registered in Hong Kong, who is accused of collaborating with extortionists and laundering money received from drug trafficking.
Legkodymov was arrested Tuesday evening in Miami, and is scheduled to appear in court today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with Europol and law enforcement agencies in France, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus.
According to the Chainalysis report, Bitzlato received more than $2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies between 2019 and 2021, of which more than $966 million were illegal assets.
According to their data, the crypto exchange received $ 206 million from the darknet, $ 224.5 million. from fraud and $9 million. from the participants of the ransowmare market. Bitzlato's largest counterparty in crypto transactions was Hydra Market before it was shut down by the US and German authorities in April 2022.
According to security officials, Hydra Market users exchanged more than $ 700 million in cryptocurrency through Bitzlato directly or through intermediaries, and more than $ 15 million, which amounted to income from ransomware programs.
According to the US Department of Justice, Bitzlato's management knew that the platform was being used in criminal activities, and many users registered their accounts using fake personal data.
The Bitzlato administration has warned its users that the exchange has been hacked, and despite the incident, all customer funds are safe, and therefore withdrawals and deposits have been suspended.
American security officials are making accusations of using the exchange, primarily in the interests of Russian hacker groups.
However, the analysis of the platform's traffic revealed more than 250 million visits from US IP addresses in July 2022 alone, which were hardly limited to legal activity.
