The Federal Prosecutor's Office for the District of Columbia in Washington announced that they intend to ask Judge Randolph Moss to sentence 36-year-old Roman Sterling, a Russian citizen and a Swedish citizen, to 30 years in prison and fine him $ 100,000.
Arrested in April 2021 at the Los Angeles airport, Sterling was charged with illegal money transfers without the necessary license in the Federal District of Columbia and several states, including New York and California, as well as money transfers to Sweden and Romania, and, as usual, money laundering. In the Federal District of Columbia, his case was handled by the metropolitan prosecutor's office. Since the day of his arrest, Sterligov has been held in custody, and his bail has been denied several times, but he is not listed in the Federal Bureau of Prisons database. According to Sterling himself in an interview with the network publication WIRED, he is being held in the "Northern Virginia state Prison".
In the motion to release Sterlingov, lawyer Tor Ekeland indicated that "a cousin from Massachusetts is ready to shelter him for the duration of the case and pay the appropriate bail, "and the lawyer himself"is also ready to place Sterlingov in his apartment in Brooklyn, New York." The lawyer also pointed out that the detention of his client in prison "makes it almost impossible for him to review electronic documents in this complex case, and his lawyers from New York have to travel five and a half hours to visit Sterling." The defense also pointed out that "no crimes were committed in the District of Columbia by (Sterling), and the prosecutor's office is illegally dragging (him) thousands of miles from his home, family and friends in Gothenburg, Sweden, to a hostile district (USA)." The court's refusal was motivated by the usual reasons in such cases, that the accused does not have strong connections in the United States and can easily escape.
It is known about Roman Sterlingov that at the age of 14, he and his family moved from Russia to Sweden for permanent residence. His trial in federal court for the District of Columbia in Washington began on February 12 this year and lasted a month, after which the jury found him guilty on all charges. Their verdict threatens the defendant with up to 20 years in prison, and Judge Randlof Moss set the sentence for July 15, but then postponed it. In addition to incarceration, the jury allowed the court to confiscate Sterling's previously frozen assets, namely 1,354 bitcoins stored in the Bitcoin Fog wallet, various cryptocurrencies in the arrested accounts of the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, as well as $ 349,625. According to the prosecution and what the jury believed, from October 2011 to April 2021, Sterling owned and operated a Bitcoin Fog mixer, and also helped launder money from criminals hiding illegal income. According to the prosecution, over these 10 years, Bitcoin Fog processed more than 1.2 million bitcoins, which at the time of Sterling's arrest were estimated at about $ 400 million. His defense insisted on Sterling's innocence, stating that he was just a user of Bitcoin Fog, did not receive financial benefits, and was neither the owner nor operator of this cryptomixer.
Judging by court documents, since 2011 Roman Sterling has been working on the "darknet" - there is a word in the New Russian language that literally means" dark network", and figuratively – a network of Internet resources that preserve the complete anonymity of their users using several levels of information encryption. According to the press release of the Ministry of Justice and the case documents, Sterling was an "administrator", that is, he managed the flow of cryptocurrency through Bitcoin Fog – a cryptocurrency turnover system created by him, which became famous for the speed of money laundering by criminals who wanted to hide illegal income. According to updated data, over ten years of operation, Bitcoin Fog under the leadership of Sterling received 486,861. 69 bitcoins, which at the time of transfers was 54,897, 316 dollars and 44 cents, and transferred 164,931. 13 bitcoins (23,690, 956 dollars and 28 cents), as a result, "turning" more than 78 million dollars. Basically, this cryptocurrency came from at least 35 darknet sites and started with income from drug trafficking, cybercrime and identity theft. "Analysis of bitcoin transfers, financial documents, data from social media providers and electronic communications, as well as additional operational information identifies Roman Sterlingov as the main operator of Bitcoin Fog," tax investigator Devon Beckett said in a 112 - page preliminary indictment to Magistrate Judge Robin Meriwether on April 26, while receiving an arrest warrant for Roman, who was detained for a month. the next day, obviously knowing when and from where he would fly to Los Angeles.
The preliminary indictment stated that Sterling founded Bitcoin Fog in 2011 under the pseudonym "Akashite Omedetu", which means "Happy New Year" in Japanese, and on behalf of which he advertised his services on the BitcoinTalk website, promising "to mix your bitcoins with other users' cryptocurrencies on our pool, destroying any possibility of using them." detect your payments and make it impossible to prove any connection between deposits and receipts (money) within our system." IRS tax investigator Devon Beckett clarified that such systems are called "mixers"or " tumblers". Devon Beckett also reported that during the investigation, an IRS operative working undercover sent an email to the Bitcoin Fog administrator saying that he would like to "launder my ecstasy trading coins" on his account in this system. For an experienced person, such a message reeks of provocation a mile away, but Roman Sterling took this "coin" at face value. The operative was allowed to transfer any amount of bitcoins through Bitcoin Fog without any questions, and Devon Becket clarified that he earned approximately $ 8 million on commissions for such transfers.
"Although the address and identity of the bitcoin owner are usually anonymous (unless the owner himself wants to provide such information)," Investigator Beckett wrote in the preliminary indictment, " law enforcement can often establish such an identity by analyzing the blockchain." Another New Russian word that every English hedgehog understands, "blockchain" is a continuous and consistent chain of blocks containing information, built according to certain rules. Commenting on Beckett's words, the co-founder of such a block Chainalysis, Jonathan Levin, added that the Sterling case is "another example of how investigators can use the right means to establish the transparency of cryptocurrencies and the flow of illegal money." Roman Sterlingov was also suspected of passing through his Bitcoin Fog cryptocurrency from the darknet markets Silk Road, Evolution, AlphaBay, Agora and Silk Road 2.0, as well as bitcoins stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges. Bitcoin Fog was not registered with the Federal Bureau of Financial Crimes Enforcement (The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or FinCEN) as a money transfer company and is not licensed for such transfers in the District of Columbia. Bitcoin is increasingly in demand among criminals, because before the authorities did not understand what it is. The clandestine nature of digital money has led many to associate it with the darknet and terrorists.
A new sentencing date for Roman Sterling has not yet been set, but Judge Moss, 63, who was appointed by President Obama 10 years ago, is unlikely to acquit him, and the 36-year-old Sterling will join the recruitment of Russian cybercriminals in American prisons for the next exchange. Among them is 44-year-old Alexander Vinnik, who was arrested at the request of the United States in Greece in 2017. In May of this year, Vinnik pleaded guilty to money laundering at a crypto exchange and is awaiting sentencing. 40-year-old Vladimir Dunaev from Yakutia was arrested in 2021 in South Korea, extradited to the United States, accused of developing the Trickbot ransomware virus, and in January of this year was sentenced to 5 years and 4 months in prison. In February last year, Georgia handed over to the United States a 28-year-old Russian wanted by the FBI, Darius Pankov, who in 2016-2019, using a computer virus created by him, took possession of user data in the United States. In September, he pleaded guilty, agreeing to receive up to 5 years in prison. And so on and so forth.
The last and largest exchange since the Cold War took place on August 1, when, among others, 40-year-old Roman Seleznev, who served 10 of the 27 years of his sentence, and 44-year-old Vladislav Klyushin, who was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to 9 years in prison, were released from our federal prisons and sent via Ankara to Russia. In Moscow, they and other exchanged Russians were greeted with a red carpet from plane to bus and an honor guard of the Russian National Guard, and they were personally greeted by President Putin. "When we arrived, Vladimir Vladimirovich personally shook my hand," Seleznev enthusiastically told the Izvestia newspaper reporter. "I almost fainted." It meant a lot. First of all, the president is a human being, and he seems to know all his own people who are in trouble. He is a man with a capital letter." Last April, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov told reporters that according to some reports, more than a hundred Russian citizens are being held in American prisons. Before him, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that there are about 60 such people, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in turn, reported about 70 such Russians. The Russian Embassy in the United States said in a statement on August 2 that " there are still dozens of Russians in American prisons who look forward to their Homeland with hope and are waiting for their time to be released." In the FBI's wanted list, you can read at least a dozen and a half cybercriminals whose names and surnames are written and sound "in Russian".
