New York District Court Judge Eric Vitaliano sentenced Anatoly Legkodymov to serve this term after he pleaded guilty to conducting illegal money transfer activities and laundering $700 million through cryptocurrencies using the Hydra darknet platform. The judge noted that Legkodymov has already served 18 months in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), and this punishment is enough for the crimes committed.
At the hearing, the judge called the MDC, where Legkodymov is being held, a "terrible place" — two murders have already occurred there in the last five weeks. Therefore, when passing sentence, the court took into account the conditions of the accused's stay. The founder of the bankrupt FTX crypto exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, was also in the MDC in a fraud case. Bankman-Fried was found guilty of all seven counts of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Legkodymov refused any claims for crypto assets worth $23 million. These funds were confiscated by French law enforcement agencies during a special operation, as a result of which the exchanger was closed on January 23, 2023.
The prosecution stated that Bitzlato users regularly asked the exchanger's customer support service to help them with transactions on Hydra, and often admitted that they traded under false names. The prosecutor's office also mentioned Legkodymov's message from May 2019, when he told his colleague at Bitzlato that many users of the exchanger could be scammers.
In a statement to the court, Legkodymov said that over the past 18 months he had been reflecting on his actions at Bitzlato and realized that as the founder of the crypto service, he could have done more. Namely, to take adequate measures to control who uses the exchanger.
Recall that in February 2023, Bitzlato presented a withdrawal plan for users, and the next month, in March, it began to return funds to depositors.