The jury found the owner of the Bitcoin Fog cryptomixer Roman Sterlingov guilty
Roman Sterling, the founder and operator of the Bitcoin Fog mixer, was convicted by the US District Court of laundering $400 million between 2011 and 2021.
On March 12, a jury of the District Court of the District of Columbia issued a guilty verdict against the owner of the Bitcoin Fog cryptomixer Roman Sterling. The jury agreed with the prosecution's evidence that Sterling owned and operated the Bitcoin Fog mixer from October 2011 to April 2021, and also facilitated money laundering by criminals seeking to hide their illegal income. According to the court, during its ten-year operation, which was stopped only after Sterling's arrest, Bitcoin Fog passed through more than 1.2 million bitcoins, which at the time of arrest was estimated at about $ 400 million.
Throughout the trial, Sterling's defense insisted on his innocence, stating that he was just a Bitcoin Fog user, did not receive financial benefits, and was not the owner or operator of the cryptomixer. However, investigators were able to show the court the transactional records of Sterling's genuine accounts on several cryptocurrency exchanges. An analysis of these accounts showed that the vast majority of cryptocurrencies deposited into Sterling's accounts were initially received and traced to bitcoin clusters associated with Bitcoin Fog.
The investigating authorities drew the attention of the jury that at the time of the launch of the service, Sterling advertised Bitcoin Fog as a tool for anonymizing bitcoin transactions and hiding income from law enforcement agencies. Bitcoin Fog services were provided on a commission basis, and judging by the transactional activity, over time, Sterling earned millions of dollars as a percentage of Bitcoin Fog transactions. Historically, the largest users of Bitcoin Fog have been darknet markets such as Agora, Silk Road, Silk Road 2.0, Evolution and AlphaBay.
In addition to the conviction, the jury also allowed the confiscation of Sterling's previously frozen assets, namely 1,354 BTC stored in the Bitcoin Fog wallet, $349,625 and various cryptocurrencies in the seized accounts of the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange.
U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss scheduled Sterling's sentencing for July 15, 2024. The former owner of Bitcoin Fog could face 25 years in prison.
