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Rosen Yosifova with her daughter Victoria Kadar: BTV
A Kentucky court found Bulgarian Rosen Yosifov guilty of laundering millions of dollars.
According to the indictment, through his cryptocurrency exchange “RG Coins,” Yosifov, 53, ran an organization that dealt with international auction fraud, BTV reports.
The case against the Bulgarian lasted 2 weeks. There are two charges against him – conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to extort money, writes the newspaper “Cointelegraph”.
He could face up to 20 years in prison for each of the two crimes. His sentence will be determined on January 12, 2021.
At the beginning of last year, the United States requested Yosifov’s extradition. Two months earlier, in December 2018, he was arrested in Bulgaria and accused of being an accessory to Romanians in a criminal operation.
Yosifov’s family and relatives even protested in front of the court, convinced of his innocence, and demanded that he stay in Bulgaria.
However, according to the US court, at least 900 US citizens were misled under the scheme in which the Bulgarians and co-conspirators from Romania participated. According to the indictment, they posted ads on popular auction platforms like eBay and Craigslist for high-value products, such as non-existent vehicles.
According to the US authorities, the fraudsters provided their victims with false documents and invoices that included trademarks from reputable companies to make the deals appear authentic, and even hired call centers and “support staff” to allay their clients’ concerns.
After receiving the payments, Yosifov converted the funds into crypto assets and transferred the proceeds to money launderers abroad, the US edition writes.
The court found that he knowingly provided services through the criminal union from at least September 2015 to December 2018, exchanging bitcoins worth more than $ 4.9 million for four other members of the organization.
The arrests were made by state and federal authorities with the help of the Romanian National Police and the Romanian Agency against Organized Crime.
Yosifov is the 17th defendant convicted in the case, with three people still at large. More than a dozen defendants were extradited from Romania.
RG Coins was founded in April 2014. The website sold hardware and facilitated the exchange of cryptocurrencies for the Eastern Europe region.
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