Officials in India apprehended the alleged co-founder of Garantex, a cryptocurrency platform that faced sanctions from the U.S. government in 2022 due to its role in enabling tens of billions of dollars in illicit financial activities by international criminal and cybercriminal groups. According to sources familiar with the investigation, the Lithuanian citizen Aleksej Besciokov, 46, was captured while holidaying along the Indian coast with his family.
Aleksej Bešciokov, known as “proforg,” “iram”. Image: U.S. Secret Service.
On March 7, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released an indictment against Besciokov and his fellow alleged co-founder of Garantex, Aleksandr Mira Serda, 40, a Russian citizen residing in the United Arab Emirates.
Established in 2019, Garantex was initially sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2022 for handling hundreds of millions in illicit revenues, including funds linked to hacking, ransomware, terrorism, and drug trafficking. Since those sanctions were imposed, Garantex has processed over $60 billion, as stated by the blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
“Garantex has been utilized for evading sanctions by Russian elites, in addition to laundering criminal proceeds such as ransomware, trades on darknet markets, and thefts associated with North Korea’s Lazarus Group,” Elliptic noted in a blog post. “Garantex has also been connected to facilitating Russian oligarchs in moving their assets abroad in the wake of Ukraine’s invasion.”
The DOJ claims that Besciokov served as Garantex’s main technical administrator, responsible for acquiring and sustaining essential Garantex infrastructure, along with overseeing and approving transactions. Mira Serda is reportedly Garantex’s co-founder and chief commercial officer.
Image: elliptic.co
Alongside the indictment announcements, German and Finnish law enforcement agencies confiscated servers that facilitated Garantex’s operations. A “most wanted” notice issued by the U.S. Secret Service indicates that U.S. authorities received earlier versions of Garantex’s servers, containing both customer and accounting information. Federal investigators also reported freezing over $26 million in resources utilized to support Garantex’s money laundering efforts.
Besciokov was detained within the past 24 hours while on holiday with his family in Varkala, a prominent coastal city in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala. An officer from the local police department in Varkala confirmed the capture of Besciokov, stating that the suspect will appear in a Delhi court on March 14 to answer to the charges.
Varkala Beach in Kerala, India. Image: Shutterstock, Dmitry Rukhlenko.
The DOJ’s indictment specifies that Besciokov operated under the hacker alias “proforg.” This moniker corresponds to the administrator of a 20-year-old Russian language platform focused on nudity and vulgarity named “udaff.”
Both Besciokov and Mira Serda face a single charge of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, which could lead to a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Additionally, Besciokov is charged with a count of conspiracy to infringe upon the International Economic Emergency Powers Act—also carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison—and with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting service, which has a potential maximum penalty of five years in prison.