According to ChainCatcher, citing The Block, on June 13, the Massachusetts local court sentenced Aleksei Andriunin, the founder of cryptocurrency market maker Gotbit, for telecommunications fraud and market manipulation, imposing an 8-month prison term and a 1-year suspended sentence. The court also sentenced Gotbit to 5 years of probation, during which the company is prohibited from conducting business.
The 26-year-old Andriunin was arrested in Portugal in October 2024 and extradited to the United States in February this year. Prosecutors accused him of conducting market manipulation, including wash trading for clients, by creating fake trading codes and manipulating multiple accounts between 2018 and 2024, involving millions of dollars. Gotbit, as a market maker, was suspected of artificially creating trading volume to help tokens list on mainstream exchanges.
