Gotbit Consulting LLC, a prominent maker of cryptocurrency market, was convicted in the federal court for criminal prosecution with regard to a multi-year regulation to manipulate digital trade volumes, according to a 13 June press release.
Aleksei Andriunin, the 26-year-old founder and CEO of the company, was sentenced to eight months in prison and a year of guided release for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and market manipulation.
The Russian-Portuguese National was extradited to the US earlier this year after his arrest in October 2024.
Public Prosecutors say that between 2018 and 2024, GotBit orched an advanced schedule in which “washing manual” was involved, using several bills to create fake transactions and to blow up the apparent market activity, on behalf of different token expenses, including Robo Inu and Saitama.
Confiscation and closure of companies
As part of a pleid agreement, Gotbit was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to forfeit around $ 23 million in seized cryptocurrency.
The company, which was located outside the United States, but worked with numerous US-accessible crypto platforms, is now obliged to stop all activities.
The Gotbit services include the generation of artificial trading volume to help customer tokens get visibility on platforms such as coinmarketcap and achieving listings at the top.
In an interview in 2019, Andriunin openly admitted that he developed washing software that made such tactics possible and at the same time avoided blockchain detection.
Crawling not to market abuse
Gotbit is the third market company that has been continued since 2024 for washing wash. Previous cases were involved in Mytrade and CLS Global, both entangled in an undercover federal operation aimed at exposing market abuse in the digital assets sector.
The directors of Gotbit, Fedor Kedrov and Qawi Jalili, remain under charge, with a criminal proceedings. In the meantime, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a parallel civil enforcement action that accuses Gotbit of violations of securities legislation.
The criminal case was prosecuted by assistant -Marican lawyers Christopher J. Markham and David M. Holcomb, handled with an asset statement by Ausa Carol Head of the Asset Recovery Unit. The Boston division of the FBI led the investigation.