Alleged Co-Founder of Garantex Arrested in India
Summary: Authorities in India arrested Aleksej Besciokov, 46, a Lithuanian national and alleged co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, while he was vacationing with his family in Varkala, Kerala. Garantex was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2022 for receiving hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds, and since those penalties it has processed more than $60 billion, according to blockchain analysis firm Elliptic.
Bottom line: A sanctioned exchange that moved over $60 billion after being penalized is the scale of laundering channel that ransomware crews and North Korea's Lazarus Group have had available, and German and Finnish law enforcement had to seize its servers alongside the U.S. indictments and a freeze of more than $26 million to begin shutting it down.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Threat Actors & Nation-State
- Related
- University of Texas at Arlington warns personal information stolen during cyberattack Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026Hackers Exploit PHP2Shell Flaws in Check Point Gateways to Deploy TSGA Backdoor and Wipe ESXi Files Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026Hackers compromise 4,800 GitHub accounts to steal cloud credentials Cyber Risks · Nov 12, 2026