Russian hacker Alexander Vinnik, convicted in Paris of money laundering, was extradited from Greece to the United States. This happened immediately after the Russian flew to Athens from France, RIA Novosti reported Friday, August 5, citing Vinnik’s family members. “He was immediately transferred to a small private jet, took off immediately and headed for Boston. From Boston today he is being officially transported on a commercial plane to San Francisco,” the agency source said.

Furthermore, the Russian’s extradition to the United States was confirmed to TASS by his French lawyer Frederic Belo. He said Vinnik is currently in San Francisco, his interests are represented by US government attorneys. In the US, he is accused of laundering $4 billion through bitcoins.

The case of Alexander Vinnik

Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik was detained at the request of the United States in the summer of 2017 in northern Greece, where he was on vacation with his family. He was accused of laundering billions of dollars through one of the world’s largest electronic cryptocurrency exchanges, BTC-e, which he allegedly ran. Vinnik denied his guilt and insisted on extradition to Russia, where less serious charges were brought against him.

In December 2019, Greek Justice Minister Kostas Tsiaras decided to extradite Vinnik to France, the United States and the Russian Federation. In January 2020, the Russian was flown to Paris, and in December of the same year he was sentenced by a Paris court to five years in prison for money laundering.

At the same time, the prosecution did not provide sufficient evidence of Vinnik’s guilt in the most serious of the crimes for which he was accused – the development of the Locky virus, which locked computers and demanded a ransom in bitcoins from users to resume work. In 2016, users in Germany, among others, fell victim to this malware.

On August 4, 2022, a Paris court approved the US request to withdraw Vinnik’s extradition request and end the case against him in France. On the night of August 4, Vinnik was transported to Greece. After arriving in the country, he disappeared, said his Greek lawyer Zoe Konstantopoulou.