The U.S. has arrested two people accused of laundering over $389 million in cryptocurrency.
Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk, 37, and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev, 25, both residing in Batumi, Republic of Georgia, were arrested on Wednesday and charged by criminal complaint with one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments and one count of sting money laundering, arising from their alleged operation of “AudiA6,” a cryptocurrency money laundering service.
A coordinated international takedown of AudiA6 and its infrastructure was conducted in conjunction with yesterday’s arrests. The takedown resulted from parallel investigations by the United States Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (“IRS-CI”), Europol, Eurojust, and other international law enforcement partners, including Australia, Canada, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
A joint action took place and involved the following:
- Three properties were searched;
- Servers and domains linked to the criminal infrastructure were targeted in the United States, Iceland, Germany, and France;
- Telegram accounts used by the network were blocked;
- Cryptocurrency assets were frozen and digital devices were seized;
- The clear web and dark web websites of the AudiA6 service and the Dark2Web cybercrime forum, one of the sites where AudiA6 advertises its services, were replaced with a law enforcement seizure banner.
Tkachuk, a Ukrainian national, and Ledenev, a Russian national, are currently in the custody of Georgian authorities. The U.S. Attorney’s Office will seek the defendants’ extradition to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The criminal websites that have been seized by the Secret Service and international partners now display this image.
The criminal complaint in this case alleges that Tkachuk and Ledenev are senior members of the AudiA6 organization, who manage the cryptocurrency money laundering service and the Dark2Web cybercrime forum. The complaint references a Dark2Web advertisement in which AudiA6 explicitly offers to conceal and disguise the source of any prospective customer’s cryptocurrency that would otherwise be traceable to criminal sources, for a fee of up to five percent of the amount of funds being laundered.
Through blockchain analysis, law enforcement has determined that approximately 10,333 Bitcoin (“BTC”), valued at about $389,747,417 at the time of the transactions, was deposited into AudiA6 cryptocurrency wallets since the service was launched in 2021. Using blockchain analysis tools and financial records obtained during the investigation, law enforcement reviewed the sources of funds directly deposited into these AudiA6 wallets.
Out of the about 10,333 bitcoins deposited, approximately 393.39 BTC (valued at around $19,234,331 at the time of the transactions) were received directly from known darknet markets, ransomware organizations, cybercrime services, and other illicit sources, while additional funds were deposited indirectly from illicit sources into AudiA6 wallets.
If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum possible sentence of 20 years of incarceration.
This case is being investigated by the Secret Service’s Cyber Investigative Section and offices in Frankfurt and Oklahoma City, as well as IRS-CI. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Benjamin D. Traster and Sima Kazmir and Special Assistant United States Attorney Richard Lorenz.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio has provided significant assistance with this case. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs and the International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (ICHIP) prosecutor based in The Hague also provided crucial support to this operation.
The Justice Department is providing cybercrime technical assistance to foreign law enforcement, prosecutorial, and judicial partners in other countries through the ICHIP program. Learn more about the Criminal Division’s ICHIP Program, jointly administered by the Criminal Division’s Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (OPDAT) and the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section through partnership between the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, here.
The charges and allegations contained in the criminal complaint are merely accusations. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.
