So according to the following, Vinnik was aware of the origin of bitcoins that were sold on BTC-e:
> Some of the funds moved to BTC-e seem to have moved straight to internal storage rather than customer deposit addresses, hinting at a relationship between Vinnik and BTC-e.
and he was stupid enough to deposit them back to his account on MtGox:
> Moving coins back onto MtGox was what let us identify Vinnik, as the MtGox accounts he used could be linked to his online identity "WME" http://archive.is/6cFcY
All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme.
I wonder, if BTC-e somehow artificially pumped the bitcoin valuation leveraging the huge amount of bitcoins they put hands on, same as what MtGox did.
Also, it looks like that Mark Karpeles wasn't involved in the whole scheme, and the hack was that simple thanks to the low or no security and engineering culture at MtGox:
> In September 2011, the MtGox hot wallet private keys were stolen, in a case of a simple copied wallet.dat file.
> the shared keypool of the wallet.dat file lead to address reuse, which confused MtGox's systems into mistakenly interpreting some of the thief's spending as deposits, crediting multiple user accounts with large sums of BTC and causing MtGox's numbers to go further out of balance by about 40,000 BTC. None of these users seem to have reported their "sudden luck".
>All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme.
Well duh, anyone involved in the Bitcoin community was very well aware of this. BTC-e has been flagrantly disregarding AML and KYC laws for it's entire existence.
Hating KYC/AML law may not be a strong indicator of legal wrongdoing; breaking it, OTOH, is not merely an indicator of legal wrongdoing, but is itself such wrongdoing.
Yes it is. The laws were legitimately passed; agree or not, citizens have a duty to follow them, or else protest them directly if they find them onerous enough.
>A Russian national arrested in Greece on Wednesday on suspicion of laundering criminal funds by switching them into bitcoins is a key person behind the BTC-e crypto-currency exchange, two sources close to the exchange told Reuters.
> All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme.
I don't see how this proves he had direct involvement in the scheme instead of just running a laundering service for people.
This blog post mentioned he was connected to other thefts as well:
>> The stolen MtGox coins were not the only stolen coins handled by Vinnik; coins stolen from Bitcoinica, Bitfloor and several other thefts from back in 2011 and 2012 were all laundered through the same wallets.
Not much solid evidence here of direct involvement in the hacks despite the bold claims, but it does look like there is some connection to the crime at the post-hack stage...
In the archived BitcoinTalk post (http://archive.is/6cFcY) he makes several references to that he is working and handling the frozen funds for a "client". (He also happens to reveal his full legal name.) Supports him working as a money launder or front man for someone else.
If he ran BTC-e and some of the stolen Mt Gox coins were transferred directly from the Gox wallet to BTC-e's internal wallet (bypassing the BTC-e customer deposit wallets), doesn't that necessarily mean he was involved?
> Some of the funds moved to BTC-e seem to have moved straight to internal storage rather than customer deposit addresses, hinting at a relationship between Vinnik and BTC-e.
and he was stupid enough to deposit them back to his account on MtGox:
> Moving coins back onto MtGox was what let us identify Vinnik, as the MtGox accounts he used could be linked to his online identity "WME" http://archive.is/6cFcY
All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme.
I wonder, if BTC-e somehow artificially pumped the bitcoin valuation leveraging the huge amount of bitcoins they put hands on, same as what MtGox did.
Also, it looks like that Mark Karpeles wasn't involved in the whole scheme, and the hack was that simple thanks to the low or no security and engineering culture at MtGox:
> In September 2011, the MtGox hot wallet private keys were stolen, in a case of a simple copied wallet.dat file.
> the shared keypool of the wallet.dat file lead to address reuse, which confused MtGox's systems into mistakenly interpreting some of the thief's spending as deposits, crediting multiple user accounts with large sums of BTC and causing MtGox's numbers to go further out of balance by about 40,000 BTC. None of these users seem to have reported their "sudden luck".