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Bitcoin exchange Coin.mx individuals extradited to US from Israel

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, together with the FBI and the USSS, has announced that two individuals associated with the now-defunct US bitcoin exchange Coin.mx have been extradited to the US from Israel.

Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein were arrested by Israeli authorities in July 2015 for charges arising out of Shalon’s orchestration of massive computer hacking crimes against U.S. financial institutions, brokerage firms, and financial news publishers, including the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution in history.

CoinDesk reported that Shalon and Orenstein appeared in Manhattan court on Thursday, indicted on securities fraud and computer hacking charges and have pleaded not guilty.

Shalon reportedly is the owner of Florida-based unlawful bitcoin exchange Coin.mx that is suspected of conducting several cyberattacks on several companies including JPMorgan, resulting in personal data from tens of millions of client accounts getting compromised. According to US prosecutors, Coin.mx was used as a conduit for funds tied to the alleged cybercrime network.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said:  “Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein, two of the alleged perpetrators of the cybercrime that we described at the time of their arrests as securities fraud on cyber steroids, have been successfully extradited from Israel to the United States.  For the alleged hacks into numerous U.S. companies, including the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution in history, in furtherance of their securities fraud, Sharon and Orenstein will now face prosecution in a U.S. court.”

Also, Anthony Murgio and Yuri Lebedev were arrested last year, each charged with one count of conspiracy to corruptly make payments to an officer of a financial institution. The prosecutors said earlier that Murgio knowingly operated Coin.mx, in violation of federal AML laws and regulations, including those requiring money services businesses like Coin.mx to meet registration and reporting requirements set forth by the United States Treasury Department. Murgio later plead not guilty.

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