TechFlow news, according to Cointelegraph, Aleksei Andriunin, founder of cryptocurrency hedge fund and market maker Gotbit, has been extradited from Portugal to the United States to face charges of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud. Andriunin was arrested in Portugal on October 8 last year and extradited to the U.S. on October 25, subsequently appearing in a federal court in Boston where he was ordered to remain in custody.
On February 26, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts announced that Andriunin, along with Gotbit directors Fedor Kedrov and Qawi Jalili, was indicted by a federal grand jury on October 31 last year. Gotbit and Andriunin were among several entities and individuals ensnared last May in the FBI's NexFundAI (NEXF) "honeypot token," a specially designed token created to catch fraudsters engaged in market manipulation.
Gotbit is accused of offering market-making services using software designed to facilitate fake trading, artificially inflating trading volumes for clients to help their tokens qualify for listing on market aggregators such as CoinMarketCap. U.S. authorities allege that between 2018 and 2024, Gotbit earned "tens of millions of dollars" from these services. The 26-year-old Russian national, Andriunin, faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the amount of proceeds gained or losses avoided if convicted.
