The Ministry of Justice has announced that Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner have taken over control of the Mt. Gox and used it to steal 647,000 Bitcoins.
Bilyuchenko is also being charged with conspiring to run the BTC-e exchange, a cryptocurrency exchange that was shut down in 2017 following allegations of money laundering.
Prosecutors stated that the hack occurred between September 2011 and at least May 2014. Two men are said to have taken control of the Mt.Gox server in Japan and made the transfer. BTC from Mt.Gox for themselves, resulting in customers’ BTC withdrawals from the exchange. They then attempt to sell BTC through another exchange they control. The prosecutor also said that they entered into a fraudulent contract with a New York Bitcoin brokerage to facilitate the buying and selling of BTC.
Although the notice does not identify BTC-e as the exchange that was used in the fraudulent transaction, it refers to an exchange named “Exchange-1”. Prosecutors said the pair of hackers received about $6.6 million from the exchange.
Mt.Gox is one of the first and largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The exchange filed for bankruptcy in March 2014 after the announcement of a hack resulted in insolvency.
BTC-e operated from 2011 to 2017 and was liquidated by the FBI in 2017 after being declared money laundering. The founder of BTC-e, Alexander Vinnik, is currently in custody in connection with the exchange.