How a US litigant and drug dealer fell in love with Ukraine and is trying to claim compensation for the murder of his “nephew”

Arkady Bukh, founder of the New York law firm Bukh Law, believes that in the wake of the scandal involving financier Jeffrey Epstein, businesses will tighten their standards of conduct.

Vinnik Alexander Alexandrovich was born August 16, 1979 in Kurgan. After graduating from school, he moved to Moscow, engaged in various Internet projects. In 2011-2017, he worked in the online digital currency exchange service BTC-e (in 2016, the exchange’s website was included in the register of banned in the Russian Federation).

We are pleased to announce that all charges against our client, Mr. Alexander Vinnik, have been fully dismissed. Pursuant to the formal judgment of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dated February 14, 2025, the criminal case has been dismissed and our client has been released from custody. As of today, Mr. Vinnik is considered a person with no criminal record, as confirmed by United States court documents.

“We have received an update on the whereabouts and status of our client, Mr. Vinnik. We have been informed that our client arrived by plane to Turkey, from where he was sent on another flight to Russia. His arrival at Moscow airport is expected in the next few hours,” Arkady Bukh said.

“The case against defendant Alexander Vinnik is now closed and he has been released from custody,” reads the February 14, 2025 decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The release of the Russian Alexander Vinnik from prison in the United States was a surprise. This was stated to “Lenta.ru” by his Lawyer Bukh Arkady Bukh.

The decision of the court of the Northern District of California to close the case of Russian Alexander Vinnik officially dismisses the charges against him. This was reported by Vinnik’s Lawyer Bukh Arkady Bukh in a conversation with a TASS correspondent.

Vinnik’s Lawyer Bukh told about the terrible food in the American prison.
The food in the American prison is terrible, said Arkady Bukh, Lawyer Bukh, the lawyer of the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e Alexander Vinnik, answering a question about the condition of the Russian.

“The federal government has already announced that it is considering the death penalty. New York State does not have the death penalty and the state will try to get a life sentence,” the expert concluded.

In the material RIAMO about Alexander Vinnik, who will be released by the United States in exchange for Mark Vogel.

Released as part of the exchange, co-founder of the crypto exchange BTC-E Alexander Vinnik will return to Russia from the United States in a few hours. He has already arrived in Turkey, from where he will fly to Moscow. About it 360.ru told the Lawyer Bukh Arkady Bukh, representing the interests of Vinnik.

The founder of the BTC-e crypto exchange, Russian Alexander Vinnik, has arrived in Russia, his lawyer Arkady Bukh told Vedomosti.

The US will release Russian Alexander Vinnik in exchange for American Mark Fogel, who was released by Russia. What is known about this, what was he accused of abroad?

Alexander Vinnik’s lawyer Arkady Bukh spoke to RT about the details of the transit of the Russian.

The defense of Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik, who is accused of money laundering in the United States, is actively lobbying for the possibility of his release, lawyer Arkady Bukh told Izvestia.

Alexander Vinnik arrived by plane to Turkey on Thursday, from where he headed to Russia on another flight. This was stated by the lawyer of the Russian Arkady Bukh to RIA Novosti.

The release of the Russian was held after the transfer of US citizen Mark Fogel to Washington.

According to Vinnik’s lawyer Arkady Bukh, the Russian arrived in Turkey by plane. In the coming hours, he will arrive in the Russian Federation on another flight.

Alexander Vinnik, accused of multi-billion dollar money laundering through the cryptocurrency platform BTC-e, has already been released from prison in the US and is being taken home to Russia.

Alexander Vinnik, co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, is returning to Russia after years in an American prison. His release became possible after an exchange between Moscow and Washington

Materials of the last hearing on the case of Russian Alexander Vinnik were classified by the decision of the judge in the United States. This was stated by Vinnik’s lawyer Arkady Bukh.

US authorities have confirmed the release of Russian Alexander Vinnik. The proceedings in the case, which had been going on for almost nine years, have been terminated. Washington said that Vinnik will be handed over to Russia.

“We have received an update on the whereabouts and status of our client, Mr. Vinnik. We have been informed that our client arrived by plane to Turkey, from where he was sent on another flight to Russia,” he emphasized.

The lawyer of the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e Alexander Vinnik Arkady Bukh said that he arrived by plane to Turkey, from where he was sent to Russia. This is reported by RIA Novosti.

“We assume that in literally the next hours he should appear, maybe days,” Vinnik’s lawyer Arkady Bukh told Rossiya-24 TV channel (VGTRK).

The airplane, on board of which is the released Russian Alexander Vinnik, arrived in Moscow. This was reported to “Izvestia” by his lawyer Arkady Bukh on February 13.

The plane with Alexander Vinnik, who was released from the US prison, landed in Turkey. The Russian was transferred to another board, and he has already flown home, Arkady Bukh, lawyer at Arkady Bukh Law firm, Vinnik’s representative, told Life.ru.

The defense of Russian Alexander Vinnik, who was exchanged by the United States for Russian prisoner Mark Vogel, said he was on his way from Turkey to Russia.

The lawyer of Russian Alexander Vinnik, Arkady Bukh, told RIA Novosti that by the decision of the judge in the United States, the materials of the last hearing in the case of his client were classified.

In the United States held a hearing on the high-profile case of Luigi Mangione, who is accused of murdering the head of one of the country’s largest insurance companies.

Charges have been filed against American rapper Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) for the rape of a 13-year-old girl, which he allegedly committed in 2000 with rapper and producer Sean Combs (known by his alias P.Diddy).

Cybersec, set up in 2015, is a controversial business that uses the services of Russian and Russian-speaking hackers to provide cybersecurity services to companies.

He was a young man with a big plan: taking aim at rich Americans, with the help of the Forbes 400 list, and robbing their financial accounts by trolling the Internet for information all the way from his base in Moscow, prosecutors in Manhattan said yesterday.

A new lawyer for Oleg Nikolayenko, a Russian citizen arrested in the United States and accused by U.S. authorities of creating a large spam distribution network, will represent the interests of the Russian at the next hearing.

Mr. Belan, who is 29 and has reddish hair, came to the F.B.I.’s attention about five years ago and has previously been charged with hacking into e-commerce companies.

The case against a SeekingArrangement.com “sugar daddy,” who was accused of rape by a “baby” he met on the popular site, was tossed Wednesday morning.

The feds have linked two Brooklyn men to the theft of $5 million from ATMs worldwide, according to court documents.

The family that stockpiles weapons together, stays together. A Brooklyn couple and their son were among four people busted for having 30 guns, nine knives and scores of drugs in their apartment across the street from a grade school, police said Saturday.

A Brooklyn quack charged with raping a sedated patient and sexually assaulting seven others got a lenient six-year sentence in exchange for a guilty plea on Tuesday.

Extradited to the United States from Spain, Russian Stanislav Lisov may be sentenced to life imprisonment. This was reported by the programmer’s Lawyer Bukh Arkady Bukh.

Russian programmer Stanislav Lisov, extradited to the United States earlier this year, faces a life sentence in prison. This was told by his Lawyer Bukh, writes “Izvestia”.

SEATTLE (AP) – Three Ukrainian members of a sophisticated international hacking group that targeted restaurants, casinos and other businesses in 47 U.S. states to steal credit and debit card records have been arrested and face charges in federal court in Seattle, officials said Wednesday.

A Russian charged with hacking LinkedIn is of great interest in a U.S. probe of election meddling, according to a Justice Department official, even as his own lawyers complain he hasn’t cooperated with them since landing in a California jail in March.

Lawyer Bukh Arkady Bukh said that the Russian Evgeny Nikulin, who is accused in the United States of hacking American social networks, is in solitary confinement. This is reported by RIA “Novosti”.

A federal judge issued a $6.8 million judgment against a Russian immigrant suspected of murdering his Brooklyn mistress for her insurance.

A Brooklyn clinic was exposed Friday as a Medicare mill where “professional patients” lined up in a “kickback room” for payoffs under a poster warning them not to snitch.

Members of the Brooklyn family caught with a stockpile of weapons are antique collectors – not dangerous thugs, according to a tenant.

The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office has denied the information that other Russian citizens were detained together with Russian hacking suspect Andrei Tyurin.

Ukrainian Fyodor Gladyr, who was arrested and is being held by US authorities on suspicion of hacking, faces decades in prison, his Lawyer Bukh told RIA Novosti.

New York resident Alsu Ivanchenko may get up to 4 years in prison for cruelty to animals: instead of treating a puppy sick with brain cancer or putting it to sleep, she wrapped it in a bag and threw it out of the car window, so the woman decided to save money.

The New York Times spoke to a variety of people – government officials, research organizations, lawyers and even hackers – in an attempt to learn more about Russian hacker Evgeny Bogachev, whom the FBI has accused of numerous cybercrimes in the United States.

In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an anti-terrorist package of laws by State Duma deputy Irina Yarovaya and senator Viktor Ozerov. Despite protests from leading IT companies, mobile operators and the Internet community, the document was approved by the State Duma in all three readings, and its authors, according to Lenta.ru’s sources, not only failed to take into account the amendments proposed by market participants, but also did not consult them at all.

The FBI may have taken former Moscow anti-doping laboratory head Grigory Rodchenkov into protective custody, most likely after he was indicted and in exchange for cooperation, Arkady Bukh, a prominent U.S.-based Lawyer Bukh told RIA Novosti on Monday.

Russian hackers are accused in the United States of gaining unauthorized access to White House information – unclassified but “sensitive”: about the schedule of US President Barack Obama, including non-public. U.S. media reported that Russian authorities may be behind the attacks.

The FBI announced the exposure of the Russian agent network. The State Duma called the case politically motivated and urged to respond to the States according to the principle of “an eye for an eye”.

NEWARK, N.J. – A Ukrainian man who founded and ran an international hardcore child sexual abuse website was sentenced today to 360 months in prison for his role in a child exploitation enterprise, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

It’s sad that the only events that seem to unify all Americans these days is terror attacks against the U.S. such as 9/11 and last year’s Boston Marathon bombings.

Pre-trial hearings were held in New York in the huge case of the Costa Rican company Liberty Reserve, accused of laundering more than 6 billion dollars.

The tranquility of the provincial American town of Altoona in the state of Pennsylvania with a population of only 46 thousand people was disturbed by a 19-year-old young man from Russia. Vladislav Miftakhov, that is the name of the Russian, was detained by the town’s police for creating an explosive device that the police described as a “weapon of mass destruction.”

The father of a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spoke in support of his son Sunday, saying he was simply in the “wrong place, (at the) wrong time, with (the) wrong people.”

According to a RIA Novosti correspondent from the courtroom of the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, Victoria Klebanova did not plead guilty.

Judging by the pictures on his VKontake social networking page, Vladislav Khorokhorin (or Horohorin in phonetic English) has a pretty good view of the French countryside in Aix-en-Provence. It’s the kind of town that — if it were allowed — companies would have bottled up the pristine air and sold it for a premium. There is Vladislav in aviator glasses holding his smartphone with the rolling blue hills of southern France behind him. Oh, but wait. He’s behind bars. The Russian alleged hacker is suffering there with his Angry Birds and his 24-hour access to all things digital while holed up in a French prison de luxe.

Few nationalities are as good at making money from hacking than the Russians. Their share of the global cyber crime market, an estimated $12.5 billion black market, doubled last year to $4.5 billion, according to Moscow-based Group-IB, a cyber security services firm working mainly with the Russian government and banks to help reduce online fraud.

The defense of Vladislav Khorokhorin, a Russian-born hacker arrested in France, has sent a petition to a federal court in Washington, D.C., asking it to close their client’s case for lack of evidence, Lawyer Bukh said.

On Tuesday night, Zdorovenin, 54, was led into a small room on the fifth floor of a Manhattan federal courthouse for his initial arraignment. He is being represented free of charge by renowned attorney Sabrina Shroff, who was the first defense attorney for Russian Viktor Bout before he hired Albert Dayan.

Oleg Nikolaenko, who is considered in the United States to be the organizer of the Mega-D zombie network and the world’s “king of spam,” may plead guilty, sources say. The lawyers will insist on a sanction in the form of a $250,000 fine. This is an insignificant sum for an industry that earns $50,000 an hour, programmers say.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has charged Russian citizen Vladimir Zdorovenin with computer fraud, credit card fraud and illegal securities transactions. He was detained in Switzerland last spring and then extradited to U.S. authorities.

A total of about 3 million people, i.e. 1% of the country’s population, are held in American prisons.

The remanded Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of sexual offenses, was moved to New York’s Rikers Island prison in accordance with the traditional procedure after his indictment.

In June 2007, Belarussian nationals Dmitry M. Naskovets and Sergey Semashko (also referred to as “Semasko” in some Department of Justice reports) created CallService.biz (“CallService”), a Russian language online business hosted in Lithuania. Unfortunately, that mundane start to this story doesn’t continue along such an innocuous path. To the contrary, this online business venture takes us over to the dark side.

Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, found guilty by a jury in the United States of conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the territory of the States, may change his team of lawyers.

At some point in the recent past, an estimated 10 billion daily spam emails, one-third of the world’s total, originated at the fingertips of one Russian man, according to a Milwaukee FBI agent.

In an action for a divorce and ancillary relief, the defendant appeals (1), as limited by her brief, from so much of an order of the Supreme Court, Kings County (Thomas, J.), dated January 21, 2010, as granted the plaintiff’s cross motion to appoint an appraiser to value her degrees for the purpose of equitable distribution, and (2) from a money judgment of the same court entered March 15, 2010, which, upon so much of the order dated January 21, 2010, as granted her motion for an award of an interim attorney’s fee, is in her favor in the sum of only $7,000, and the plaintiff cross-appeals (1), as limited by his brief, from so much of the same order as granted the defendant’s motion for an award of an interim attorney’s fee, and (2) from the same money judgment.

The special airplane on board which Bout was on landed Tuesday evening at a U.S. Air Force base near New York. And as early as yesterday, the Russian was due to appear in federal court in the Southern District of New York.

Seventeen people were busted for plundering a whopping $42.5 million meant to help survivors of the the Nazi Holocaust — and instead gave the cash to people who were not eligible by forging documents and getting kickbacks in return, federal prosecutors announced today.

A group that stole a large sum of money from two funds paying compensation to victims of the Holocaust has been uncovered in the United States. According to the FBI, the suspects, being in collusion with employees of the funds, sent to charitable organizations more than 5 thousand fictitious appeals with a request to provide material assistance – and thus stole $42 million.

U.S. authorities have announced the filing of criminal charges against 73 members of a predominantly Armenian criminal gang accused of a range of crimes, from grandiose health insurance scams to counterfeit credit card fraud to trafficking in contraband cigarettes and stolen or counterfeit Viagra.

According to the indictment, the group of fraudsters, which also included citizens of Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, stole passwords to depositors’ “personal accounts” using the Zeus trojan program. Then, using the stolen passwords, they transferred the Americans’ money to fake accounts and cashed it out. The attackers managed to steal about 3 million dollars from five U.S. banks, the couriers received from 8 to 10 percent of the reward for illegal transactions.

In the press – one after another – there appeared articles about various scandals, one way or another connected with “Russians” – from absurd story about Russian spies to sensational information about “raid” on medical offices, robbing the Medicare fund, and arrests of doctors, medical workers, patients – including Russian-speaking ones… But the most nightmarish story concerns not espionage or Medicare fraud, but human trafficking, that is, the importation of live goods into America, which is essentially a modern form of slavery.

On August 6, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Tsurikov, 26, was extradited from Estonia to the United States, where he faces charges of stealing $9.4 million by illegally breaking into the RBS WorldPay payment system.

A Brooklyn medical office used a Soviet-era propaganda poster to tell Russian-immigrant patients to keep quiet about kickbacks they were getting for letting doctors submit thousands of bogus Medicare claims in their names, federal prosecutors revealed yesterday.

Elderly Russian immigrants lined up to take kickbacks from the backroom of a Brooklyn clinic. Claims flooded in from Miami for HIV treatments that never occurred. One professional patient was named in nearly 4,000 false Medicare claims.

The FBI has carried out the largest operation in history in the fight against health insurance fraud.

The FBI has raided a Manhattan “boiler room” brokerage firm and arrested several people, including one suspect with alleged links to the mob, officials said today.

Four Brooklyn, N.Y.-area residents have been charged in connection with a health care fraud scheme operated out of the Solstice Wellness Center, a Brooklyn-area clinic that purported to specialize in providing physical therapy and various diagnostic tests, announced the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services (HHS).

Cops arrested a Brooklyn father, mother, son and family friend for keeping a huge arsenal of guns and knives inside their home across the street from an elementary school, officials said.

UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. anti-corruption task force has accused an Italian executive and a former U.N. official of taking bribes from a U.S. security contractor seeking to do business with the United Nations, according to a confidential U.N. letter obtained by The Washington Post.

On Monday, June 28, Russian-speaking Americans were bombarded with sensational and shocking news: 10 Russian spies were arrested in our country who had been living in the United States for years and doing their dirty work….

American Albert Gonzales, accused of stealing the data of 130 million bank cards, has broken his own record: last May he was charged with stealing information on 40 million cards.

Six people were busted yesterday for allegedly running a 10-year scheme in Brooklyn that filed bogus health claims and ripped off Medicaid by more than $47 million, authorities announced yesterday.

Today, officers of the Tax Police Department of the Milan Financial Police are conducting a preventive seizure of about 750,000 euros against Leopoldo Braghieri (your best friend, according to the definition he gave of himself in support of the transfers with which he paid bribes), a world-renowned entrepreneur in the prefabricated construction industry and a longtime acquaintance of the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office since the “Oil for Food” investigation, and the company CO.G.IM S.p.a.

With a man who had the kindness to transfer 754,000 euros to an offshore checking account, it could not have been otherwise. The friend is Leopoldo Bragieri, the hidden partner and de facto administrator of Cogim spa, a Piacenza-based company specializing in the construction of prefabricated housing modules.

Upon the foregoing papers, plaintiff Vadim Purygin (the husband) moves for summary judgment as a matter of law: (1) pursuant to CPLR 3212(c) and Domestic Relations Law (DRL) § 236, dismissing the claim of defendant Irina Purygina (the wife) to share in his alleged enhanced earnings capacity from the courses of study that he completed at Long Island University (LIU); (2) pursuant to CPLR 3212(c) and DRL § 236, dismissing defendant’s claim of a right to share in his alleged enhanced earning capacity from the medical degree that he obtained from Ross University Medical School (Medical School); and (3) pursuant to CPLR 3212(c) and DRL § 236, dismissing defendant’s claim of a right to share in his alleged enhanced earning capacity from the one year of medical residency that he completed prior to the commencement of the instant divorce action that had not then [*2]resulted in any degree or license. Defendant cross moves for an order, pursuant to DRL § 237, granting her attorneys’ fees and costs in defending this motion.

The district court of the Turkish city of Antalya has sentenced 26-year-old Kharkiv resident Maxim Yastremskyy to 30 years in prison. The man stole money from the accounts of clients of Turkish banks.

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the indictment of eleven individuals suspected of large-scale bank credit card fraud. The defendants include citizens of the United States, Ukraine, China, Belarus and Estonia. Their case will be tried in federal court in New York.

The court of the Avtozavodsky district of Togliatti recently sentenced hacker Roman Lukin to four and a half years of probation for robbing one of the largest private banks in Turkey. According to Turkish bankers, he and his accomplice Ilya Baloga stole more than 500 thousand dollars from them.

The elderly Brooklyn woman tossed to the sidewalk by her unlicensed dentist following a botched surgery has gone into a permanent vegetative state, her outraged family said yesterday.

In the classic Hollywood comedy “How to Murder Your Wife,” Jack Lemmon is falsely accused after creating the perfect crime for a newspaper cartoon strip.

A federal judge, acting on behalf of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has frozen $3 million belonging to an Eastern European cybercrime gang that allegedly hacked into seven U.S. brokerage firms, then used stolen funds to mount a stock manipulation scheme.

Today in the federal court of the Southern District of New York resumes hearings on the case of Russian citizen Vladimir Kuznetsov, former head of the UN Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Affairs. He is charged with conspiracy to launder money. However, at the end of last week, an event took place, because of which today the case may be closed and the defendant released.

The former owners of a glitzy supper club in Brooklyn were charged yesterday with threatening a man who owed them $70,000 from a high-stakes poker game, authorities said.
The victim had accused suspect Michael Mitselmakher, 40, of cheating during the two-day game of Texas Hold ‘Em at Rasputin in Brighton Beach last year.
When the victim refused to pay up, Mitselmakher and his brother Alex, 33, threatened to kill him, according to court papers.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 — Federal authorities arrested a Russian diplomat and indicted him on charges that he conspired with a U.N. procurement officer to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, U.S. officials said Friday.

Another Russian UN official has been arrested in the United States. Vadim Kuznetsov worked until today in the budget committee of the General Assembly. He became the second Russian UN official arrested on suspicion of financial fraud. Earlier, Alexander Yakovlev was arrested under the same article and accused of money laundering through the “Oil for Food” program.

A former United Nations procurement officer pleaded guilty to soliciting a bribe under the Iraq oil-for-food program, making him the first U.N. official to face criminal charges in connection with the scandal-tainted operation, AP reported.

U.S. authorities have charged 18 people in an alleged plot to smuggle grenade launchers, shoulder-fired missiles and other Russian military weapons into the country.

NEW YORK, March 15 — U.S. authorities charged 18 people in an alleged scheme to smuggle grenade launchers, shoulder-fired missiles and other Russian military weapons into the United States, officials announced Tuesday.

Federal officials on Thursday announced they had cracked a Belarus-based international child pornography ring with arrests in France, Spain and the United States.

NEW YORK (CNN) – The Secret Service and the FBI confirmed Wednesday they have been involved for the past two weeks in trying to track down the computer hacker who breached the security system of Data Processors International, which processes credit card transactions on behalf of merchants.