The Paris court announced its sentence to Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik, accused of large-scale money laundering through the BTC-e crypto exchange. He was sentenced to five years in prison and a fine worth more than €100,000.

The Paris Correctional Court sentenced Russian Alexander Vinnik to five years in prison on charges of money laundering and imposed a fine of more than €100,000, including compensation to the injured parties, Russian news agency TASS reports.

Vinnik was found guilty of money laundering under aggravated circumstances and as part of a criminal group.

The court did not recognize Vinnik guilty nor in disrupting operations of automated systems of a number of organizations and individuals neither in using the Locky malware to carry out cyberattacks.

The prosecutor asked for 10 years in prison for Vinnik. The prosecution argued that Vinnik was the "brain" and "conductor" of a criminal scheme to steal personal data and extort money. Vinnik's defense insisted that he was a simple operator of BTC-e and was not the beneficiary of any malicious software scheme.

Vinnik was detained in Greece on July 25, 2017 at the request of the US authorities. A jury in San Francisco, California, charged him with $4-9 billion in money laundering and cryptocurrency fraud on the BTC-e exchange. Later, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation also sent a request for Vinnik's extradition from Greece, since a criminal case is being investigated against him at home on charges of large-scale fraud. The latest extradition request was sent by France, where Vinnik was suspected of organizing a large-scale mailing of Locky malware in order to extort money from various victims. The Greek court granted the French side's motion.

In January 2020, Vinnik was extradited from Greece to France.