🚨 EXPOSED: Russian National Laundered $530M in Crypto Bypassing Sanctions!
A massive illicit finance operation has been busted! Iurii Gugnin, a Russian national, faces 22 criminal counts for allegedly orchestrating a half-billion-dollar money laundering scheme using cryptocurrency, primarily Tether (USDT), to aid sanctioned Russian entities and deceive US banks. This isn't just a local scam; it's a direct threat to national security, showing how digital assets can be weaponized to evade critical sanctions.
Gugnin, through his crypto firms Evita Investments and Evita Pay, allegedly built a "covert pipeline" that funneled over $530 million through the US financial system between June 2023 and January 2025. His clients, often linked to blacklisted Russian banks like Sberbank, VTB, Sovcombank, and Tinkoff, used his service to convert crypto into US dollars, obscuring the funds' true origins.
The scheme was riddled with deception: Gugnin reportedly falsified compliance documents, "whited out" Russian client details on invoices, and operated without a proper Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program, failing to file required Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). This allowed Russian entities to illegally acquire sensitive US technologies, including servers and components for Russia's state nuclear agency, Rosatom.
The feds even found damning evidence of Gugnin's guilt awareness, with search queries like "how to know if there is an investigation against you" and "money laundering penalties US." He faces up to 30 years in prison for each bank fraud charge alone, signaling a severe crackdown on crypto-enabled illicit finance.
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