The U.S. Department of Justice announced federal charges against three Russian nationals accused of operating the Blender.io and Sinbad.io cryptocurrency mixing services to launder criminal proceeds and run an unlicensed money transmitting business. A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Georgia returned the indictment on 7 January, and two defendants, Roman Vitalyevich Ostapenko and Alexander Evgenievich Oleynik, were arrested on 1 December 2024, while Anton Vyachlavovich Tarasov remains at large. Court documents allege the mixers charged fees to obscure the source of cryptocurrency and were used to launder proceeds linked to ransomware, wire fraud, virtual currency thefts and other crimes, including activity attributed to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea state-sponsored hacking groups. Blender.io operated from approximately 2018 to 2022 and was marketed as requiring no registration and keeping no logs, while Sinbad.io began operating a few months after Blender.io shut down and was taken offline after its infrastructure was seized in a coordinated action on 27 November 2023. The release also notes that the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Blender.io on 6 May 2022 and Sinbad.io on 29 November 2023. Ostapenko is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, while Oleynik and Tarasov each face one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The Department of Justice stated that the money laundering conspiracy count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and each unlicensed money transmitting count up to five years, and emphasized that an indictment is an allegation and defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

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