Gotbit Consulting LLC, a distinguished cryptocurrency market maker, was sentenced in federal courtroom for prison expenses associated to a multi-year scheme to manipulate digital asset buying and selling volumes, in accordance with a June 13 press release.
Aleksei Andriunin, the agency’s 26-year-old founder and CEO, was sentenced to eight months in jail and one yr of supervised launch for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and market manipulation.
The Russian-Portuguese nationwide was extradited from Portugal to the U.S. earlier this yr after his arrest in October 2024.
Prosecutors say Gotbit orchestrated a complicated scheme between 2018 and 2024 that concerned “wash buying and selling,” which entails the usage of a number of accounts to create pretend trades and inflate obvious market exercise, on behalf of varied token issuers, together with Robo Inu and Saitama.
Forfeiture and company shutdown
As a part of a plea settlement, Gotbit was sentenced to 5 years of probation and ordered to forfeit roughly $23 million in seized cryptocurrency.
The agency, which was primarily based outdoors the US however labored with quite a few U.S.-accessible crypto platforms, is now required to stop all operations.
Gotbit’s companies included producing synthetic buying and selling quantity to assist consumer tokens achieve visibility on platforms resembling CoinMarketCap and obtain listings on top-tier exchanges.
In a 2019 interview, Andriunin overtly admitted to creating wash buying and selling software program that enabled such techniques whereas avoiding blockchain detection.
Cracking down on market abuse
Gotbit is the third market-making agency to be prosecuted for wash buying and selling since 2024. Earlier instances concerned MyTrade and CLS World, each ensnared in an undercover federal operation geared toward exposing market abuse within the digital asset sector.
Gotbit’s administrators, Fedor Kedrov and Qawi Jalili, stay beneath indictment, with prison proceedings ongoing. In the meantime, the Securities and Change Fee (SEC) has launched a parallel civil enforcement motion accusing Gotbit of securities legislation violations.
The prison case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christopher J. Markham and David M. Holcomb, with asset forfeiture dealt with by AUSA Carol Head of the Asset Restoration Unit. The FBI’s Boston Division led the investigation.
