DOJ charges two in $389M AudiA6 crypto-laundering case

Federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint Wednesday charging two men arrested in Batumi, Georgia, with operating AudiA6, a cryptocurrency laundering service that handled about $389 million in transactions since 2021. The complaint names Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk, 37, a Ukrainian national, and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev, 25, a Russian national. Both were taken into custody the day the complaint was unsealed and are awaiting extradition.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania brought one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments and one count of money laundering against each man.

The complaint alleges the two were senior members of the AudiA6 organization and managed the Dark2Web forum where the service was advertised.

The filing cited a forum advertisement offering to “conceal and disguise the source of cryptocurrency” that would otherwise be traceable to criminal activity, for a fee of up to 5% of the amount being laundered.

Blockchain analysis included in the complaint found roughly 10,333 bitcoins were deposited into wallets controlled by AudiA6 since the service began in 2021. About 393.39 BTC were traced as direct deposits from known darknet markets, ransomware groups, cybercrime services and other illicit sources, while the remainder were routed indirectly from illicit sources. The U.S. Attorney's Office summarized the total processed value as approximately $389 million.

The case was handled as a coordinated international law enforcement operation. The joint effort involved the U.S. Secret Service, IRS Criminal Investigation, Europol and Eurojust, and partners from Australia, Canada, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Actions taken during the probe, according to the filing, included searches of three properties; targeting of servers and domains across the United States, Iceland, Germany and France; blocking of Telegram accounts linked to the network; freezing of cryptocurrency assets; seizure of electronic devices; and replacing AudiA6 and Dark2Web web pages with law enforcement seizure banners.

The defendants remain held in Georgia pending extradition proceedings. No additional comment was included in the unsealed complaint.