Alleged Blender, Sinbad cryptomixer operators arrested, indicted
Three Russian nationals have been indicted in the Northern District of Georgia for their alleged role as operators of cryptocurrency mixing (cryptomixer) services Blender.io and Sinbad.io.
Roman Vitalyevich Ostapenko and Alexander Evgenievich Oleynik were arrested on Dec. 1, 2024, roughly a year after Sinbad.io’s online infrastructure was seized as part of a coordinated law enforcement action among the Netherlands’ Financial Intelligence and Investigative Service, Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI.
The third defendant, Anton Vyachlavovich Tarasov, remains at large.
“Last year, with the assistance of our international partners, we successfully dismantled Sinbad.io,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Sean Burke of the FBI Atlanta Field Office. “However, we did not rest with this initial success. We maintained our focus on identifying the individuals responsible for its development and ensuring their accountability. These indictments serve as a testament to the power of international cooperation.”
According to court documents and publicly available information, Blender.io and Sinbad.io were cryptocurrency mixers that allowed their users, for a fee, to send cryptocurrency to designated recipients in a manner designed to hide the source of the cryptocurrency. Blender.io and Sinbad.io were available for use by the public via the internet and used by criminals looking to distance themselves from the fact that their funds came from cryptocurrency thefts, ransomware attacks, and other crimes.
Blender.io operated from approximately 2018 to 2022. The service was advertised on a popular internet forum as having a “No Logs Policy” and deleting any traces of user transactions. Additionally, in the advertisement, Blender was described as not requiring users to sign up, register, or “provide any kind of detail except the receiving address!” The advertisement asserted that, “[a]s there are no personal details asked for, there’s no way your identity is compromised, or can be linked back to, because as far as blender.io goes they don’t know who you are.”
After Blender.io shut down, Sinbad.io began operating a few months later. Like Blender.io, Sinbad.io provided users with Bitcoin concealment services. And, on November 27, 2023, Sinbad.io was taken down through law enforcement action.
Ostapenko, 55, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Oleynik, 44, and Tarasov, 32, are both charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.
If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for the money laundering conspiracy count and five years in prison for each unlicensed money transmitting business count.
The Netherlands’ Public Prosecution Service and Fiscal Information and Investigative Service made significant contributions to the case, including to the disruption of the Sinbad mixer, and provided other valuable assistance. Significant support was also provided by the Australian Federal Police and Attorney-General’s Department, and Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation.