By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The co-founder of Hong Kong-registered virtual currency exchange Bitzlato, a Russian national who U.S. authorities accuse of processing about $700 million in illicit funds, is expected to enter a guilty plea in a U.S. court on Wednesday.
Federal court records in Brooklyn showed Anatoly Legkodymov, Bitzlato’s majority owner and co-founder, was set to appear before U.S. District Judge Eric Vitaliano at 2:30 p.m. EST (1930 GMT) for a “criminal cause for pleading,” which usually indicates a defendant will plead guilty.
Legkodymov’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Legkodymov, who U.S. officials have said ran Bitzlato from the Chinese city of Shenzhen, was arrested in Miami on Jan. 17. He has since been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Federal prosecutors said Legkodymov, 41, operated Bitzlato as an unlicensed money exchange business and swapped hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency with Hydra Market, which they described as a marketplace for drugs, stolen financial information and money laundering services.
Bitzlato’s website has since then been replaced by a notice saying the service has been seized by French authorities as part of a coordinated international law enforcement action. U.S. and German law enforcement shut down Hydra Market in April 2022.
The expected guilty plea is the latest victory in U.S. law enforcement’s crackdown on fraud and illicit finance in the cryptocurrency markets.
Last month, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on charges of stealing billions of dollars from that cryptocurrency exchange’s customers, while rival Binance agreed to pay a $4.3 billion settlement and chief executive officer Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to breaking U.S. anti-money laundering laws.
Binance was among Bitzlato’s top counterparties, according to U.S. authorities.
Russia’s embassy in Washington called for Legkodymov’s release in April after Ambassador Anatoly Antonov visited him in jail. Hours earlier, Russia had denied a U.S. embassy request to visit detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said on Tuesday that Russia in recent weeks rejected a proposal for the release of Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, two Americans considered by the U.S. to be wrongfully detained in Russia.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
