The US Department of Justice is suing two men for allegedly laundering over $389 million in cryptocurrency.

June 11 – The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced that 37-year-old Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk and 25-year-old Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev have been arrested and charged criminally with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, federal prosecutors confirmed. The two are accused of running a cryptocurrency laundering service called “AudiA6,” which authorities believe has laundered more than $389 million in cryptocurrency funds. Tkachuk is a Ukrainian citizen, Ledenev is a Russian citizen, and both are currently detained by Georgian authorities in Batumi. The U.S. prosecutors intend to seek the extradition of both individuals to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to face the charges. Per the criminal complaint, Tkachuk and Ledenev are senior members of the AudiA6 organization, which operates both the crypto laundering service and the Dark2Web online cybercrime forum. The complaint alleges that AudiA6 openly advertised on Dark2Web that it would charge up to a 5% fee to help clients conceal and obfuscate the original source of cryptocurrency funds traceable to criminal activity. Law enforcement agencies used blockchain analysis to trace activity since AudiA6 launched in 2021: approximately 10,333 Bitcoin (BTC) were deposited into AudiA6’s cryptocurrency wallets, with a total value at the time of the transactions of roughly $3.897 billion. Of that amount, about 393.39 BTC were directly linked to known darknet markets, ransomware organizations, cybercrime services, and other illicit sources, with a corresponding value at the time of the transactions of around $19.23 million. Each defendant faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted.