Odaily Planet Daily News Gotbit founder and CEO Aleksei Andriunin was sentenced to eight months in prison by the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts on Friday for manipulating the crypto market and carrying out millions of dollars of wash trading. He will be subject to one year of supervised release after serving his sentence.
The prosecutor pointed out that Andriunin and the Gotbit team provided fake trading volume manufacturing services for multiple crypto projects from 2018 to 2024, forged on-chain activity through code and multi-account operations, helped the project to be listed on CoinMarketCap and attracted large exchanges to go online. Gotbit received tens of millions of dollars in compensation for this.
In addition, Gotbit was also sentenced to five years of probation, during which time it was not allowed to continue to operate related businesses. The prosecutor said Andriunin was arrested in Portugal in October 2024, extradited to the United States in February 2025, and signed a plea agreement in March this year.