Who is Alexander Vinnik
Alexander Vinnik was born in Kurgan on August 16, 1979. After graduating from high school, he moved to Moscow. Here he took part in the creation of the site “Holidays.ru”, where they posted information about various holidays in different countries of the world. Then Vinnik was engaged in other Internet projects: in 2011, for example, he started working on the online trading platform for currencies and cryptocurrencies VTS-E. Later, he serviced transactions between electronic systems, earning on commissions.
The growing popularity of the VTS-E exchange, of which Vinnik is considered one of the founders, soon led to problems. In 2016, the Primorsky District Court of St. Petersburg imposed sanctions on him and put him on the list of banned resources. Later, after the arrest of Alexander Vinnik, the exchange was closed altogether.
Why Vinnik was arrested
In 2017, Alexander Vinnik, along with his family, flew to Greece for a vacation. That’s where he was detained at the request of the United States. The San Francisco prosecutor’s office accused him of 21 counts, including laundering $4 billion (data vary: from $4 to 9 billion), obtained by criminal means through BTC-e, cyber fraud, identity theft, hacking the Japanese exchange Mt.Gox, which provoked its bankruptcy, as well as participation in drug trafficking – and this is not the entire list. The Russian himself denied guilt and claimed that he was only advising the exchange.
The U.S. was not the only one who had a grudge against Vinnik. Russia accused him of embezzlement and fraud, and France accused him of money laundering and extortion through the Locky virus he spread.
In Greece, he was in solitary confinement in the Thessaloniki pre-trial detention center. To attract the attention of the Russian media, Vinnik repeatedly went on hunger strikes. In addition, his health began to deteriorate due to nutrition, Vinnik complained of frequent headaches, so he tried to obtain through his lawyers to be released under house arrest. In the pre-trial detention center he was visited by the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova, after which he stopped his hunger strikes. Despite numerous requests, extradition to Russia was not realized. In 2018, Vinnik reported an assassination attempt being prepared on him in prison.
In Russia, Vinnik was accused of cyber fraud to the amount of 750 million rubles and arrested in absentia in 2018. He himself, while in Greece, claimed that he agreed to return to his homeland and stand trial here.
In 2020, Alexander Vinnik was transferred to France, where he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of €100,000. In addition, the prosecutor requested a total of 10 years’ imprisonment, claiming that Vinnik is a “pirate of international level”.
In 2022, Vinnik was transferred to the United States, where he was held in San Francisco prison. His lawyer, Frederic Belo, appealed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to assist in Vinnik’s exchange.
Two years later, in May 2024, Vinnik pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. He admitted to conspiracy to launder money. He would have been sentenced in June 2025, facing up to 200 years in prison.
Alexander Vinnik’s family
Alexander Vinnik had a family – a wife and two minor children. While Vinnik was in prison, his spouse died due to cancer. This aggravated the situation in which Alexander Vinnik was. The upbringing of the children fell on the shoulders of their grandmother – Vinnik’s mother.
Release in exchange for Vogel
In February 2025, the U.S. State Department and the presidential administration announced that the criminal case against Vinnik was being dropped. The U.S. could extradite Vinnik to his home country in exchange for American Mark Vogel, convicted in Russia in a drug smuggling case. He will be released from the American prison and handed over to the Russian Federation in the near future.
However, for now he is in the US and work on his defense has not stopped, said Vinnik’s Lawyer Bukh Arkady Bukh. “Mr. Vinnik continues to be in the United States, and our work on his protection does not stop. We are making every possible effort within the legal framework to achieve the best possible result,” Buch said.
He added that a hearing was recently held in a Florida federal court on Vinnik’s case. “However, due to the judge’s decision, the materials of the hearing are classified and we cannot comment on its course and content,” the lawyer said.
Source: https://riamo.ru/articles/lyudi/kriptovaljutnyj-korol-kto-takoj-aleksandr-vinnik-kotorogo-planirujut-osvobodit-ssha/