Russia refuses to freeze millions of dollars in cryptocurrency withdrawn from Wex wallets

The Russian Interior Ministry has rejected a request from Wex customers to block withdrawals of cryptocurrencies from wallets due to the now defunct exchange. More than 10,000 ETH were recently withdrawn from the wallet and moved to other platforms.

Wex victims try to freeze $ 46 million in lost crypto

The Investigation Service of the Russian Interior Ministry (MVD) has refused to comply with a request from victims of the Wex exchange that $ 45.9 million worth of digital assets withdrawn from one of the exchanges were seized in September by Indefibank CEO Sergey Mendeleev an official agency document and share on social media.

Former Wex users provided MVD with detailed diagrams on how to transfer funds from wallets to other platforms. They also sent data from an analytics tool to prove the coins were stolen and told authorities that they had contacted Binance, which had received some of the funds (97.8 ETH). The exchange has frozen these assets for a period of 7 business days.

Source: Crystal Blockchain

The current processes at Binance allow the company’s security department to temporarily freeze funds after receiving compelling evidence of a theft. The party applying for the measure must then contact the responsible law enforcement authorities and send a police report back to the platform. Binance will then work with investigators to clear up the incident.

Wex customers have requested the Russian Interior Ministry to confiscate the stolen funds. However, according to an official response dated October 25, the victim’s circumstances must be further investigated before authorities can take action. MVD believes that a decision on the seizure of assets would be premature during the preliminary investigation and based on the information available.

The Wex exchange is inherited from the infamous BTC-e, which was once Russia’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform but was discontinued 4 years ago. In September this year it was reported that former Wex operator Dmitry Vasiliev was arrested in Warsaw. The news was later confirmed by the Polish authorities, who also announced that they were considering an extradition request filed by Kazakhstan accusing him of fraud.

Wex was launched in the fall of 2017 and had daily sales of $ 80 million before abruptly stopping payouts and going bankrupt in the summer of 2018. According to estimates by a user group, the total damage amounts to over 400 million dollars, Vasiliev is suspected of having embezzled 200 million dollars.

According to the news, 100 ETH was withdrawn from the Wex wallet in mid-September and was the first fund move in the last 3 years. The remaining balance in the wallet ($ 9,916, worth $ 30 million at the time) was also moved to a new address a few days later.

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