A Russian crypto entrepreneur accused of laundering money from ransomware attacks has been sentenced to probation and fined in the US after pleading guilty. The founder of the two currency trading platforms, Denis Dubnikov, was arrested in the Netherlands and extradited to the United States last year.
Oregon Russian court rulings for processing Ryuk payments
A Russian citizen accused of money laundering in connection with the distribution of ransomware has been sentenced to three years in prison on probation in the United States. Denis Dubnikov was arrested in Amsterdam in November 2021 and extradited to the United States in August 2022.
A federal court in Oregon also ordered the 30-year-old crypto entrepreneur to forfeit $2,000 in proceeds, a portion of what he made as a result of his criminal activity, and to pay $10,100 in criminal financial penalties.
Initially, US prosecutors charged the Russian and his accomplices with laundering the proceeds of Ryuk ransomware attacks on individuals and organizations in the US and other countries between at least August 2018 and August 2021.
court documents It has now shown that owner of cryptocurrency exchanges Coyote Crypto and Eggchange laundered only a portion of Ryuk ransomware payments, stating that “the defendant was not involved in the underlying ransomware activity and is guilty of willful blindness theory.”
In July 2019, an American company paid $250 BTC (about $3.1 million) ransom after the Ryuk attack. Dubnikov agreed to exchange 35 BTC for nearly $400,000 in cash. He didn’t know these were proceeds from ransomware, the court says, but he also “deliberately avoided knowing the truth.”
Ryuk is a type of software that encrypts files on target enterprise computers. First identified in 2018, the ransomware has been used against numerous victims around the world, including hospitals and healthcare providers in the United States.
The court ruling takes into account the time that Dubnikov spent in detention. He was ordered to comply with supervision requirements, including reporting to police regularly, administering drug tests, and providing DNA samples as requested by law enforcement.
Do you expect more arrests and convictions related to the Ryuk ransomware attacks? Share your thoughts on the issue in the comments section below.
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