The founder of a so-called crypto hedge fund and market marker called Gotbit has been extradited from Portugal to the US, where he is facing charges related to market manipulation and wire fraud conspiracy.
Aleksei Andriunin was arrested by Portuguese authorities on Oct. 8, and was extradited to the US on Oct. 25. Sometime after, he appeared in a federal court in Boston, where he was ordered to remain detained until further notice, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts said on Feb. 26.
It comes as Andriunin and Gotbit directors Fedor Kedrov and Qawi Jalili were indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 31.
Gotbit and Andriunin were among several entities and individuals that allegedly fell for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s NexFundAI (NEXF) “trap token” in May — which was created to catch fraudsters engaged in market manipulation.
Gotbit allegedly carried out market maker services by implementing software that facilitated wash trading to artificially inflate trading volumes for its clients looking to secure crypto token listings on market aggregators like CoinMarketCap and trading on exchanges.
Source: Cointelegraph
Kedrov and Jalili were accused of marketing these wash trading tactics to prospective clients, and authorities said they admitted to using a specific strategy to conceal those wash trades on public blockchains in a 2019 interview.
US authorities allege that Gotbit “received tens of millions of dollars” in proceeds in connection with those services between 2018 and 2024.
Andriunin, a 26-year-old Russian national, has also been accused of transferring a portion of those proceeds into his personal Binance account.
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If convicted, Andriunin faces up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud and a fine of up to $250,000 or “twice the gross gain or loss from the offense, restitution and forfeiture.”
The charge of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud charges also carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a fraud suit against Gotbit and Kedrov in October.
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