U.S. Law Enforcement has Frozen over $26 million in Garantex Funds
On March 7, 2025, the Justice Department announced the seizure of assets from Garantex, a cryptocurrency exchange that allegedly facilitated money laundering by transnational criminal organizations. Since April 2019, Garantex has processed more than $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions.
The cryptocurrency of innocent account holders on Garantex were also seized by the U.S. Government for criminal asset forfeiture proceedings.
The Department also announced the unsealing of an indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia against Aleksej Besciokov, 46, a Lithuanian national and Russian resident, and Aleksandr Mira Serda (previously Aleksandr Ntifo-Siaw), 40, a Russian national and United Arab Emirates resident. Both are charged with money laundering conspiracy, and Besciokov is charged with conspiracy to violate sanctions and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
The indictment alleges that between 2019 and 2025, Besciokov and Mira Serda controlled and operated Garantex. Besciokov was Garantex’s primary technical administrator and responsible for obtaining and maintaining critical Garantex infrastructure, as well as reviewing and approving transactions. Mira Serda was Garantex’s co-founder and chief commercial officer.
The indictment alleges Garantex received hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds used to facilitate various crimes, including hacking, ransomware, terrorism, and drug trafficking, often with substantial impact to U.S. victims.
According to the indictment, Besciokov and Mira Serda knew that criminal proceeds were being laundered through Garantex and took steps to conceal the facilitation of illegal activities on its platform.
On April 5, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Garantex for its role in facilitating money laundering of funds from ransomware actors and darknet markets. Thereafter, Besciokov and his co-conspirators violated those sanctions by continuing to transact with U.S.-based entities.
On March 6, U.S. law enforcement, led by the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), executed a seizure order authorized by a judge in the Eastern District of Virginia against three website domain names used to support Garantex’s operations. According to court records unsealed today, Garantex.org, Garantex.io, and Garantex.academy were associated with the administration and operation of Garantex. The seizure of these domains will prevent these sites from being used for money laundering and additional crimes.
Individuals visiting those sites now will see a message indicating that the site has been seized by law enforcement.
U.S. law authorities have separately obtained earlier copies of Garantex’s servers, including customer and accounting databases. In addition, U.S. law enforcement has also frozen over $26 million in funds used to facilitate Garantex’s money laundering activities.
Attorneys in the DOJ Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team are prosecuting the case.
The DOJ acknowledged Tether and blockchain analytics firm Elliptic for their proactive assistance in the investigation.
