Alleged multimillion-dollar crypto laundering scheme busted with help from Canada

A law enforcement seizure banner on an alleged cybercrime forum. (U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania)

Canada is one of a list of countries around the globe that helped take down an alleged cryptocurrency laundering scheme known as “AudiA6.”

In a release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said that two men living in the Republic of Georgia were arrested this week and charged in connection to the alleged operation.

The operation is said to have laundered more than US$389 million in cryptocurrency.

Ukrainian national Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk, 37, and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev, 25, originally of Russia, are currently in Georgian custody. However, the USAO is looking to extradite them to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The USAO alleges that Tkachuk and Ledenev are senior members of the AudiA6 organization and manage the cryptocurrency money laundering service, as well as the Dark2Web cybercrime forum. The release says both sites have now been replaced with a seizure banner from law enforcement.

The USAO say that AudiA6 explicitly advertised services on the forum to “conceal and disguise the source of any prospective customer’s cryptocurrency that would otherwise be traceable to criminal sources, for a fee of up to five per cent of the amount of funds being laundered.”

Investigators used blockchain analysis to determine that around US$389,747,417 worth of bitcoin was put into AudiA6 cryptocurrency wallets since it was first launched in 2021.

They said approximately $19,234,331 of that came from “darknet markets, ransomware organizations, cybercrime services, and other illicit sources, while additional funds were deposited indirectly from illicit sources into AudiA6 wallets.”

Australia, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, and the U.K. helped with the operation. The United States Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, Europol and Eurojust were also involved.

The accused men face a maximum of 20 years each if convicted, the USAO said.