The Trump administration traded Russian cybercrime kingpin Alexander Vinnik for American teacher Marc Fogel, a senior administration official confirmed to The Washington Times. 

Vinnik was arrested in 2017 in Greece, then extradited to France and, later, to the U.S. to stand trial on charges of money laundering and fraud.

The charges arose from his time heading BTC-e, a cryptocurrency exchange that handled over $9 billion in transactions. Vinnik led the exchange from 2011-17. 

Vinnik didn’t register BTC-e as a money service business despite having a large U.S. clientele. The Justice Department used his case as an example of the efforts to combat cryptocurrency fraud across the globe.

In December 2020, Vinnik was convicted by a French court of money laundering and sentenced to five years in prison. He pleaded guilty last May of conspiracy to commit money laundering before a federal judge in San Francisco. 

Mr. Fogel, who was convicted in Russia on marijuana charges, was released Tuesday in the exchange engineered by the Trump administration. 

• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.

• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.