Gotbit founder Aleksei Andriunin strikes a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors

Gotbit founder Aleksei Andriunin struck a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday that will see him serve no more than 24 months behind bars

Gotbit founder Aleksei Andriunin has struck a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors that will see him serve no more than 24 months behind bars for his role in what prosecutors described as a “wide-ranging conspiracy” to manipulate token prices for paying clients.

Andriunin, a 26-year-old Russian national, was extradited to the U.S. last month and charged with two counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud – charges which carry a maximum combined sentence of 25 years in prison. In exchange for a reduced sentence, Andriunin pleaded guilty to all three counts. He also agreed to forfeit approximately $23 million in stablecoins tied to his crimes. The government is not seeking any other fine.

Andriunin’s sentencing hearing is set for Dec. 14.

In their indictment last October, prosecutors alleged that Gotbit was basically a market manipulator for hire, offering wash-trading services to paying crypto projects who wanted to artificially inflate the volume and price of their tokens. In return for these services, Gotbit charged a fee – an "integration" fee, in the company’s own words.

Andriunin’s guilty plea is not entirely surprising: he was never coy about Gotbit’s business activities. In a 2019 interview with CoinDesk, Andriunin – then a 20-year-old college sophomore at Moscow State University – admitted that his business was “not entirely ethical” and detailed how he used bot trading to create enough artificial trade volume for a project to be listed on CoinMarketCap.

Gotbit is not the only market maker offering these services. At the same time that Andriunin and his company were charged, along with two other employees, U.S. prosecutors charged a handful of other firms, including CLS Global, MyTrade and ZMQuant, as well as several of the companies’ employees and promoters, with similarly offering for-hire market manipulation services.