Russia Prisoner Swap Snarls Crypto Operator’s Corruption Case

The implications of a major international prisoner swap in February—the deal that released American schoolteacher Marc Fogel from a Russian prison—will reach a San Francisco courtroom Friday.

Fogel was released in exchange for Russian national Alexander Vinnik, who allegedly operated a Bitcoin money laundering entity called BTC-e and could have served as a key fact witness in the case of a BTC-e co-operator on trial in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Aliaksandr Klimenka, a Belarusian national, is asking Northern District Judge Susan Illston to dismiss the case against him because Vinnik can no longer testify on Klimenka’s behalf. The case alleges Klimenka helped the cryptocurrency exchange process over $9 billion in transactions that included money laundering and other moves for cyber criminals.

Klimenka argues the government has deprived him of his right to a fair case by exchanging away Vinnik, in violation of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.

“At the outset, counsel for Mr. Klimenka acknowledge the government for the successful return of a United States citizen from Russia,” Klimenka’s motion to dismiss says. But the government was aware that Vinnik had proclaimed his innocence in a previous trial in France and that his “testimony could have exculpated Mr. Klimenka,” which shows the government’s bad faith, the defense said.

An attorney for Klimenka declined to comment on the motion because it is still pending. The US Attorney’s office declined to comment.

Russian National Alexander Vinnik

Vinnik was exchanged back to Russia in February in one of the first major prisoners swaps under the Trump administration, months after pleading guilty to federal money laundering charges. The US Attorney’s office for the Northern District of California, where Vinnik had pled guilty and was awaiting sentencing, dismissed its indictment.

In exchange, Russian returned Fogel, a schoolteacher who was arrested in Russia in 2021 and faced a 14 year prison sentence for allegedly possessing medical cannabis in his luggage.

Klimenka’s attorneys also say that the exchange violates his equal protection rights because he faces a prosecution based on his nationality, saying in their motion that Vinnik “got a benefit for being Russian while Mr. Klimenka suffers continued prosecution because he is not.”

Shane Stansbury, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and law professor at Duke University, said US Attorneys’ offices don’t have much say in the decision making behind an international prisoner swap.

“Those are the sort of higher level, purely political and diplomatic exchanges, and in those cases, line prosecutors are almost never involved,” he said.

Vinnik was first indicted on international money laundering charges by federal prosecutors in 2016. They alleged that Vinnik promoted BTC-e between 2011 and 2017, when it was shut down, as an exchange for criminals to launder proceeds from major hacking incidents, ransomware attacks, and drug distribution rings.

It was actually used that way, prosecutors allege, after a 2011 hack of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, when the hackers turned to BTC-e to launder the proceeds—hundreds of thousands of stolen Bitcoin.

Vinnik faced protracted extradition fights between the US, France, and Russia after he was arrested in Greece in 2017; he was ultimately extradited to the US in 2022.

Lacking Evidence

Klimenka, charged with similar money laundering violations, was arrested in Latvia in late 2023 and extradited to the US. He pled not guilty, and faces a jury trial in October.

Stansbury, who reviewed the case documents, said Klimenka’s motion appears to lack evidence showing that the government knew Vinnik could provide exculpatory testimony. The motion is largely based on a second-hand account of Vinnik’s trial in France and a press interview where Vinnik claimed his innocence after he was returned to Russia.

“That hardly seems like the kind of evidence that would convince a court that this defendant’s constitutional rights were being violated,” Stansbury said.

He noted that Klimenka could still attempt to obtain a deposition of an international witness, which could be substituted for live testimony at trial under the rules of federal criminal procedure.

Noland Barton Olmos & Luciano LLP, Baker Hostetler LLP, Jayne Law Group, and Verner Simon represent Klimenka.

The case is USA v. Klimenka, N.D. Cal., No. 3:22-cr-00256, motion to dismiss hearing scheduled 6/6/25.