$694 million worth of bitcoins disappeared from BTC-e co-founder Bilyuchenko's wallet.

A wallet linked to Alexey Ivanov-Bilyuchenko, co-founder of the collapsed crypto exchanges BTC-e and Wex, lost 6,500 bitcoins worth $694 million, according to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, which is close to Russian security forces.

Experts from the Lookonchain blockchain platform confirmed the transfer of bitcoins to unknown addresses. They believe the funds from the wallet of the co-founder of the BTC-e and Wex exchanges will likely be split.

According to a source at VChK-OGPU, the bitcoin transfer is a withdrawal from Wex, a crypto exchange linked to “Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev and the successor to BTC-e. The withdrawal of funds belonging to clients occurs literally against the backdrop of platform users' attempts to recover stolen assets through the courts, VChK-OGPU writes.

Alexey Bilyuchenko, along with Alexander Vinnik, founded the BTC-e crypto exchange in 2011. In July 2017, the exchange shut down after its servers were seized by US authorities. Bilyuchenko then launched a new project, the Wex crypto exchange, but it also shut down in 2018. In March 2022, Bilyuchenko, who had changed his last name to Ivanov, was arrested in the Moscow region. He was found to be carrying 190 million rubles in cash in two suitcases.

Ivanov-Bilyuchenko was charged under Part 4 of Article 160 of the Russian Criminal Code (theft of another's property by misappropriation or embezzlement as part of an organized group or on an especially large scale). On September 20, 2023, the Meshchansky Court of Moscow sentenced Ivanov-Bilyuchenko to 3.5 years in a general regime penal colony and a fine of 500,000 rubles for embezzling 3.17 billion rubles from Wex exchange clients.

Moscow-based law firm Lidings recently announced it has begun accepting compensation claims from Russian and foreign users of the BTC-e and Wex crypto exchanges.

Source: cryptonews.net