Russian citizen Denis Dubnikov, who was arrested last November in the Netherlands on money laundering charges, was extradited this week to the United States. This is stated in a statement from the US Department of Justice, published on Wednesday, August 17th.

According to the agency, Dubnikov, 29, appeared in court on Wednesday in Portland, Oregon. The start of his case by the jury is scheduled for October 4th. The Oregon State Detention Center confirmed to RIA Novosti that the Russian was with them. He was denied the opportunity to bail, the news agency writes.

As noted in a Ministry of Justice statement, US authorities accuse Dubnikov of money laundering in the interests of a group of cyber criminals calling themselves Ryuk. According to the prosecution, the Russian in July 2019 laundered more than $400,000 obtained as a result of cyberattacks using ransomware viruses in the United States and abroad. If he is found guilty, Dubnikov faces up to 20 years in prison.

Dubnikov’s arrest in the Netherlands

Russian lawyer Arkady Bukh previously said that in early November last year, Dubnikov was barred from entering Mexico. From there he went to Amsterdam, where he was detained at the request of the United States. Bukh noted that Dubnikov’s defense would insist that “he did not know where the money came from and acted in full compliance with Russian law”.

As The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) wrote in November, Ryuk may be behind a series of ransomware attacks on the US healthcare system in 2020 and has received millions of dollars from the victims of those attacks.

Dubnikov is a co-founder of two cryptocurrency trading platforms, EggChange and Crypto Coyote. According to the WSJ, US authorities accuse him of laundering money through these platforms. In November, Bloomberg published a material in which it mentioned EggChange as one of four companies with offices in Moscow and withdrawing illegally obtained cryptocurrencies.