The Fed also accuses them of conspiring to launder about 647K bitcoins

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged two Russian nationals for hacking and causing the subsequent collapse of Mt. Gox, one of the largest and most popular crypto exchanges.

In an unsealed indictment, the DoJ named Alexey Bilyuchenko, 43, and Aleksandr Verner, 29, of hacking the exchange and conspiring to launder about 647,000 bitcoins, worth about $17.2 billion today.

Bilyuchenko was also charged for conspiring with one Alexander Vinnik to operate the “illicit exchange,” BTC-e, from 2011 to 2017. BTC-e was shut down by U.S. law enforcement in 2017 and Vinnik was extradited to the U.S. from Greece in 2022