Deniz 
After Monday’s guilty plea to conspiring to fail to establish an effective Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program at the cryptocurrency exchange, Paxful co-founder and former tech chief Artur Schaback is facing a maximum of five years in jail.
Guilty Plea and Sentencing Date
On July 8, the United States Justice Department indicated that the former chief technical officer of the exchange, Schaback, was due to be sentenced on November 4 and would thus resign from Paxful’s board.
Filed the same day in a California District Court, a plea agreement reveals government prosecutors agreed to pay a $5 million fine, which Schaback would pay back in three installments—$1 million by the date of his guilty plea, $3 million by his sentence, and the last $1 million within the next two years.
AML and KYC Failures
An information file from late March outlining his accusations alleged Schaback and a co-conspirator—identified only as Paxful’s “President and Chief Executive Officer”—failed to build an effective AML policy within 90 days of launching the company as mandated under the Bank Securrency Act.
The prosecution said he also neglected to create a Know Your Customer (KYC) program to check individuals before they utilized the exchange, which must gather at least the name, birth date, address, and “other identifying information.”
Consequences of Neglect
The Justice Department said in a statement, “As a result of his failure to implement AML and KYC programs, Schaback made Paxful available as a vehicle for money laundering, sanctions violations, and other criminal activity, including fraud, romance scams, extortion schemes, and prostitution.”
Between July 2015 and June 2019, Schaback and the “co-conspirator” let users open Paxful accounts and trade without providing “sufficient identifying information or documentation” that could validate them.
The complaint added that Paxful also sold itself to consumers “as a platform that did not require KYC and/or that allowed buying without ID.”
Schaback and the “co-conspirator” submitted one “plagiarized from another institution” they knew wasn’t “implemented or enforced” when third parties sought an AML policy.
With Schaback, or the “co-conspirator,” the two also “made exceptions to AML and KYC policies based on Paxful customers’ trading volumes and their relationships.”
Internal Conflicts
Schaback sued his co-founder Peer and former CEO Mohamad (Ray) Youssef in March 2023, locking them into a conflict over control of the exchange with accusations of theft of corporate finances, money laundering, and sanctions evasions, among others.
Paxful agreed to a court order assigning Srinivas Raju, director at the legal firm Richards, Layton, and Finger, Youssef stated in an April 2022 blog post.
Paxful reported late May 2023 that Roshan Dharia was hired as Interim CEO.
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