Russian FSB and $450 million worth of lost crypto
A fate of $450 million worth of lost crypto is now more or less clear. The money from a cryptocurrency exchange WEX, which is defunct now, might have been transferred to the intelligence agency. It was belonging to the Russian part, in other words, to Federal Security Bureau. This data was provided on the 15th f November by the Russian Service
Thus new details were added to a huge BTC-e crypto exchange case thanks to this BBC’s investigation. The subject is Alexander Vinnik’s accusation of fraud and stealing around $4 billion in BTC during the last six years. The revealed details showed that FSB might be involved here.
Demands to hand $450 million worth to the FSB
During the investigation BBC revealed the audio enlightning the case a bit. It shows that someone called Anton(most likely Anton Nemkin a former FSB officer) is connected to Aleksey Bilyuchenko and Konstantin Malofeyev. They are the people responsible for creating BTC-e and its following sale.
In the 2018 at one of the meetings Nemkin requested the cold wallets with assets of WEX to be handed to him. Later on they delivered Bilyuchenko to FSB department. They processed questioning regarding the WEX operations as well as other matters, related to the case. Almost at the same time Nemkin demanded transferring once again. He stated that all the amount will be received by so called “fund of FSB of Russia”. At the time of the events there was $450 million worth cryptocurrency on the wallets, partially belonging to the WEX’s customers.
Soon enough Bilyuchenko agreed on the conditions and processed the transfer. According to the Blockchain.com and Explorer.Litecoin.net platforms, the amount equivalent to $350 million was recorded. Here was 30,000 BTC and 700,000 LTC at that time.
Other cases related to the parties
This July former WEX CEO was arrested in Italy. In spring 2019 Vasilyev he became a subject of investigation in Kazakh city Almaty. The reason – suspicion that he was trying to fraud a local investor and the related amount was something about $20,000. The fraud scheme should have been processed via WEX exchange.
