Aleksei Andriunin, the founder and CEO of Gotbit, a cryptocurrency financial services firm, has pleaded guilty to charges of market manipulation and wire fraud in a U.S. federal court in Boston. Andriunin admitted to engaging in “wash trading” to artificially inflate trading volumes of digital tokens for clients, aiding their listings on larger exchanges. Following his extradition from Portugal, where he was arrested in October during “Operation Token Mirrors,” Andriunin faces up to two years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for June 16. Gotbit has agreed to forfeit approximately $23 million in cryptocurrency.
