Aleksei Andriunin, a Russian national charged with manipulating cryptocurrency through the Gotbit market maker platform, has reportedly struck a plea deal with prosecutors in the United States.

Gotbit founder and CEO Andriunin has agreed to forfeit about $23 million in Tether USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC) in a plea deal with Massachusetts federal prosecutors, the legal news service Law360 reported on March 19.

As part of the plea, Andriunin will plead guilty to three counts charging conspiracy to commit wire fraud and market manipulation, according to the letter signed by the defendant on March 19.

“Defendant understands and agrees that forfeiture shall not satisfy or affect any fine, lien, penalty, restitution, cost of imprisonment, tax liability or any other debt owed to the United States,” the letter reads.

The agreement doesn’t bind the US Attorney General

In the letter to the defendant, the US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Leah Foley, stressed that the agreement to forfeit $23 million is only between Andriunin and the attorney.

“It does not bind the Attorney General of the United States or any other federal, state, or local prosecuting authorities,” the letter reads.

The letter also states that the defendant acknowledges the court is not obligated to adhere to the sentencing calculations proposed by the Massachusetts attorney.

“Defendant may not withdraw defendant’s guilty plea if defendant disagrees with how the court calculates the guidelines or with the sentence the court imposes,” attorney Foley wrote.

Andriunin was extradited to the US in October 2025

Gotbit founder’s deal with Massachusetts prosecutors came months after Andriunin was extradited to the US in October 2024 after being arrested by Portuguese authorities.

Since extradition, Andriunin has appeared in a federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was ordered to remain detained until further notice.

Andriunin, 26, was charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud in a superseding indictment in October 2024.

According to Massachusetts court documents, Gotbit was a crypto “market maker” that orchestrated a “widespread cryptocurrency market manipulation scheme.” The platform was registered in Belize and was said to provide artificial trading volume for global firms, including those in the US, between 2017 and 2024.

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Apart from Andriunin, the criminal complaint from Massachusetts authorities in September 2024 also involved other Gotbit employees, such as marketing director Fedor Kedrov and sales director Qawi Jalili, both living in Russia.

In the plea letter, Massachusetts attorney Foley mentioned that the assets listed in the forfeiture section of the Gotbit plea agreement are solely controlled by the defendant on Gotbit’s behalf despite these assets belonging to Gotbit.

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Shuttered crypto exchange Garantex is reportedly back under a new name after laundering millions in ruble-backed stablecoins and sending them to a freshly created exchange, according to a Swiss blockchain analytics company.  

Global Ledger claims the operators of the Russian exchange have shifted liquidity and customer deposits to Grinex, which they say is “Garantex’s full-fledged successor,” in a report released to X on March 19.

“We can confidently state that Grinex and Garantex are directly connected both onchain and offchain.”

“The movement of funds, including the systematic transfer of A7A5 liquidity, the use of one-time-use wallets, and the involvement of addresses previously associated with Garantex, provides clear onchain proof of their link,” the Global Ledger team said in the report.

After completing its investigation on March 13, Global Ledger says it had found onchain data showing Garantex laundered over $60 million worth of ruble-backed stablecoins called A7A5 and sent them to addresses associated with Grinex.

“In this case, the burning and subsequent minting process was used to launder funds from Garantex, allowing new coins to be minted from a system address with a clean history,” the team said.

A Garantex manager also reportedly told Global Ledger that customers have been visiting the exchange office in person and moving funds from Garantex to Grinex.

“Additionally, offchain indicators, such as transactional patterns, commentaries and exchange behaviors, further reinforce this connection,” it said.

The report also points to a description of Grinex on the Russian crypto tracking site CoinMarketRating, claiming that the owners of Garantex created it. The reports said this shows “Grinex is not an independent entity but rather a full-fledged successor to Garantex, continuing its financial operations despite the exchange’s official shutdown.”

By March 14, the volume of incoming transactions on Grinex was nearly $30 million, according to Global Ledger. CoinMarketRating shows that the trade volume for the month is now over $68 million, with spot trading topping $2 million.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control first hit Garantex with sanctions in April 2022 for allegedly money laundering violations.

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On March 6, the US Department of Justice collaborated with authorities in Germany and Finland to freeze domains associated with Garantex, which they claim processed over $96 billion worth of criminal proceeds since launching in 2019.

Stablecoin operator Tether also froze $27 million in Tether (USDT), on March 6 which forced Garantex to halt all operations, including withdrawals.

Only a few days later, on March 12, officials with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Aleksej Bešciokov, who allegedly operated Garantex, on US charges that included conspiracy to commit money laundering. 

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Crypto regulations must be enacted through an act of Congress to become permanent and meaningful pieces of legislation, according to former Congressman Wiley Nickel.

In an exclusive video interview with Cointelegraph’s Turner Wright, Nickel urged bipartisan collaboration to push through comprehensive crypto regulations. The former Congressman added:

“I think it’s really important for anybody who cares about this issue to step back and realize that if you want lasting change in Washington, you must move legislation through Congress. Otherwise, if you’re talking about executive orders, it will just go back and forth.”

“You don’t want to have the mess that we saw just months ago with Gary Gensler’s SEC — you need to get legislation through Congress,” Nickel reiterated.

President Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order establishing the Working Group on Digital Assets, which also prohibited the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and the order establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve alongside a separate crypto stockpile, were both examples of executive actions that can be reversed at a later date.

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Both chambers of Congress rush to push through meaningful legislation

Rep. Tom Emmer, the majority whip of the United States House of Representatives, reintroduced legislation banning a CBDC in the US on March 6.

Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis also reintroduced the Bitcoin Act in March, which builds upon an earlier bill of the same title but allows the US to purchase more than 1 million Bitcoin (BTC).

Rep. Byron Donalds recently announced that he would draft legislation to codify the Bitcoin strategic reserve into law — shielding President Trump’s original executive order from being overturned by a future administration.

On March 12, the House of Representatives repealed the IRS broker rule requiring decentralized finance platforms to report information to the Internal Revenue Service in a 292-131 vote.

Speaking at this year’s Blockworks Digital Asset Summit, Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna said that Congress should be able to pass comprehensive crypto regulation in 2025, including a stablecoin bill and a market structure bill.

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