NEW YORK, January 11. /TASS/. A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Georgia returned an indictment charging three Russian nationals with money laundering, the US Department of Justice reported.
Two Russians, Roman Ostapenko and Alexander Oleynik, were arrested on December 1, 2024, while the third defendant, Anton Tarasov, remains at large, according to the report. All of them are charged with involvement in operating the cryptocurrency mixing services Blender.io and Sinbad.io that served as safe havens for laundering criminally derived funds. Blender.io operated from approximately 2018 to 2022, the Justice Department said, adding that Sinbad.io was put on the US sanctions list in 2023. Both services were used by criminals looking to distance themselves from the fact that their funds came from cryptocurrency thefts, ransomware attacks, and other crimes, the report said.
Ostapenko is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Oleynik and Tarasov are both charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for the money laundering conspiracy count and five years in prison for each unlicensed money transmitting business count.