Deniz 
Alexander Vinnik, one of the Russian co-founders of BTC-e, has pleaded guilty to a bitcoin money laundering conspiracy. A broader probe revealed significant illegal trading operations for 2011–2017.
Under Vinnik, the US Justice Department (DOJ) stated that BTC-e processed over $9 billion in transactions and had more than one million customers, many of whom were Americans. According federal district court judge will sentence him under the United States Sentencing Guidelines and other statues.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the platform cleaned up computer hacking, ransomware attacks, and drug trafficking.
The DOJ determined that BTC-e did not register with FinCEN and did not comply with AML or KYC regulations.
BTC-e was notorious among criminals because of its shortcomings. Vinnik has set up a lot of shell companies and financial accounts across the world to move money formed illegally on BTC-e. At least $121 million went missing through crime.
Vinnik has been struggling in court for over five years for his alleged BTC-e masterminding. The cryptocurrency exchange reportedly profited from criminal activities that cleaned up $4 billion of Bitcoin.
In 2020, Vinnik was extradited to France since he had been found in Greece under a U.S. warrant for money laundering in 2017. In France, Vinnik got a five-year term for money laundering, not ransomware.
The lawyers of Vinnik’s made an ineffective appeal that Vinnik was a worker of the exchange but not included in the illegal actions of BTC-e. After sitting in a French jail for two years, she was sent to the U.S. on August 5, 2022.
Vinnik was extradited to the US with the help of the Greek government, as per the Justice Department. Before, Vinnik wanted to make a deal between Russia and the USA about him.
Executives in crypto exchanges too. Sam Bankman-Fried, the ex-CEO of FTX, was sentenced to 25 years for seven felonies on March 28.