The founder of Gotbit, Aleksei Andriunin, reached an agreement with American prosecutors on Wednesday who will see it no more than 24 months after bars for their role in what prosecutors described as a “conspiracy of great scope” to manipulate token prices for customers who pay.
Andriunin, a 26 -year -old Russian citizen, was extradited to the United States since Portugal last month and accused of two positions of electronic fraud and conspiracy to commit market manipulation and fraud to the cable, charges that carry a maximum combined sentence of 25 years in prison. In exchange for a reduced sentence, Andriunin declared himself guilty of the three positions. He also agreed to lose approximately $ 23 million in stablocoins linked to his crimes. The government is not looking for any other fine.
In their accusation last October, prosecutors alleged that Gotbit was basically a market manipulator for rent, offering washing trade services to cryptographic projects that wanted to artificially inflate the volume and price of their tokens.
Andriunin’s guilt statement is not entirely surprising: he was never shy about Gotbit’s commercial activities. In a 2019 interview with Coindesk, Andriunin, then a second -year 20 -year -old University student at Moscow State University, admitted that his business “was not entirely ethical” and explained how he used the Bot trade to create enough artificial trade volume so that a project was listed in Coinmarketcap.
Read more: for $ 15K, he will pretend his exchange volume: he will get in Coinmarketcap
Gotbit is not the only market manufacturer that offers these services. At the same time, that Andriunin and his company were accused, along with two other employees, US prosecutors accused a handful of other companies, including CLS Global, Mytrade and ZMQUANT, as well as several of the employees and promoters of the companies, who similarly offered the manipulation services of the rental market.
Andriunin’s ruling date has not yet been established.
