The US has sentenced a holder of a cryptocurrency exchange to 10 years in prison. He “knowingly and intentionally engaged in business practices designed to help fraudsters launder the proceeds of their fraud and protect themselves from criminal liability,” the Justice Department claims.
Crypto Exchange owners sentenced to 10 years in prison
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday that a Bitcoin exchange holder had been sentenced to 121 months in prison “for his role in a multi-million dollar transnational program to defraud American victims.”
After his conviction last September, Rossen G. Iossifov was convicted of “conspiracy to commit a crime under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and conspiracy to commit money laundering”.
The DOJ stated that the 53-year-old Bulgarian national owned and managed a cryptocurrency exchange based in Sofia, Bulgaria called RG Coins. He allegedly “knowingly and intentionally used business practices designed to help fraudsters launder the proceeds of their fraud and protect themselves from criminal liability.” The Justice Department alleged that at least five of its key customers were “Romanian scammers belonging to a criminal company known in court records as the Alexandria (Romania) Online Auction Fraud (AOAF) Network.”
Iossifov and his co-conspirators “participated in a large-scale online auction fraud program that killed at least 900 Americans,” said the DOJ, adding that once payment was received, the victims:
The conspiracy resulted in a complicated money laundering system in which domestic employees accepted sacrificial funds, converted those funds into cryptocurrency, and transferred proceeds in the form of cryptocurrency to money launderers based abroad.
“Iossifov was one of those overseas money launderers who facilitated this final step in the program,” the DOJ noted.
The Justice Department went on to claim that “Iossifov designed its business to suit criminal businesses, for example by offering cheaper exchange rates to members of the AOAF network”.
Iossifov also allowed his criminal clients to conduct cryptocurrency exchanges for cash without the need for identification or documentation to identify the source of money, although unlike the major Bitcoin exchanges that backed his business, he was at odds.
According to the DOJ, Iossifov laundered nearly $ 5 million worth of cryptocurrency for four fraudsters in less than three years. He also defrauded over $ 7 million from American victims and generated over $ 184,000 in revenue from these transactions.
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american investors, bitcoin exchange, bitcoin exchange owners, bitcoin scam, bitcoin scam, bulgaria, crypto exchange, cryptocurrency exchange, jail, KYC, jail
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