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

BlockBeats News, 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 criminally charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The U.S. prosecutors stated that the two individuals are accused of operating a cryptocurrency money laundering service known as "AudiA6," which is believed to have been responsible for laundering over $389 million in cryptocurrency. Tkachuk is a Ukrainian citizen, Ledenev is a Russian citizen, and both reside in Batumi, Georgia, where they are currently detained by Georgian authorities. The U.S. prosecutors intend to seek the extradition of both individuals to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

According to the criminal complaint, Tkachuk and Ledenev are senior members of the AudiA6 organization, which operates the cryptocurrency laundering service and the Dark2Web online cybercrime forum. The complaint alleges that AudiA6 explicitly advertised on Dark2Web that it could 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 identified through blockchain analysis that since AudiA6 launched in 2021, approximately 10,333 BTC have been deposited into AudiA6's cryptocurrency wallets, with a total value at the time of the transactions of approximately $3.897 billion. Approximately 393.39 BTC were directly linked to known darknet markets, ransomware organizations, cybercrime services, and other illicit sources, with a value at the time of the transactions of about $19.23 million. If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.