Cryptocurrency exchange peer to peer (P2P) Undetained Bitzlato was little known prior to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) enforcement action on January 18. It was founded in 2016 by recently imprisoned Russian businessman Anatoly Legkodimov.
According to a Russian source, Legkodymov owns 73.4% of Bitzlato, which has an office on a high floor of the Federation Tower skyscraper in Moscow, where it has facilitated transactions of US$100,000 or more. Legkodymov and her senior partner in Bitzlato are also allegedly involved in Russian mining equipment distributor A-HVT.
Legkodymov has a long and turbulent history in the cryptocurrency industry dating back over a decade. His first post on the BitcoinTalk forum dates back to 2011, where he describes the events that led him to lose over 50 BTC:
Legkodimov described the process of opening the Bitzlato exchange on an online forum in 2017:
“My team and I analyzed several failure scenarios, including a simulated hacker attack by the owners and operators of the exchange, and found a solution that allows us to operate a bitcoin exchange in a highly secure manner.”
While Bitzlato attracted little attention until the DOJ action on January 18, Chainalysis stated in a report in February of last year that the exchange “received $206 million from darknet markets, $224.5 million from scams and $9 million from ransomware attacks.” “.
According to the report, illegal and risky transactions accounted for 48% of the company’s business at the time.
The Justice Department announced that it would hold a conference to present the allegations earlier in the day, but did not indicate which companies would participate. This led many members of the community who had been speculating about the existence of much larger names to react with some irony:
Someone told the Department of Justice that 7 crime figures in cryptocurrency are called a normal Wednesday. https://t.co/zpV6LcLrpW
—Dylan LeClair (@DylanLeClair_) January 18, 2023
Someone told the DOJ that 7-figure cryptocurrency crime is normal on any given Wednesday.
—Dylan LeClair (@DylanLeClair_)
You kind of understand how completely inappropriate Bizlato is when you realize there was no ENS deterioration that was worth recording until 12 minutes ago. pic.twitter.com/QpXqMy0HIs
– anon.eth (@player1_eth) January 18, 2023
You kind of realize Bizlato is totally irrelevant when you realize not a single person from ENS thought it worth signing up until 12 minutes ago
– anon.eth (@player1_eth)
Attorney, commenting on the Department of Justice webinar, named The lawsuit against Pizzlato is about “a plan for future business, perhaps even one that is hotly anticipated today.”
Others saw darker forces at work to take down the dark web actor:
Brooklyn is accusing Anatoly Legkodimov, a Russian national and chief executive of Bitzlato Ltd. (pizzlato)
luke bitcoin core dev.
It seems Anatoly was og bitcoin.
They have been business partners since the time of the OG…
Luke was mysteriously “hacked” a few weeks ago with all his btc
– Sn/Fr-axgen 200x (napgener) January 18, 2023
Brooklyn accuses Anatoly Legkodimov, a Russian national and chief executive of Bitzlato Ltd. (pizzlato)
Luke Bitcoin Core Dev.
Looks like Anatoly was from the bitcoin old guard.
They were trading partners from ancient times…
Luke was mysteriously “hacked” a few weeks ago with all his btc
– Sn/Fr-axgen 200x (napgener)
Obviously, Bitzlato herself was not suspicious of the action that was going to happen. His Twitter profile posted the exchange rates to his 1,488 followers on the morning of January 18th.
lol you are in jail
– UnsafeMedicine (unsafemedicine) January 18, 2023
lol you are in jail
– UnsafeMedicine (unsafemedicine)
Read more