In a coordinated law enforcement action involving authorities in the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Canada and elsewhere, an alleged crypto-based money laundering service, known as AudiA6, was taken down — and its operators are facing criminal charges in the U.S., following an undercover sting.
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania charged two residents of the Republic of Georgia — Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev — with money laundering and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments in connection with their alleged operation of AudiA6.
According to the criminal complaint, the AudiA6 service offered crypto mixing services that promised to conceal the original of cryptoassets, making it difficult to identify their origin.
In a sting operation, between late 2022 and early 2026, undercover agents based in the U.S. carried out several transactions on the service, claiming that the assets they used in these transactions were the proceeds of criminal activity, the complaint noted.
The service, which was advertised on cybercrime forums such as Dark2Web, charged a commission based on the amount of crypto being processed, and the risk that it could be traced to illicit sources, U.S. authorities alleged.
They also reported that blockchain analysis revealed that approximately 10,333 Bitcoin, which were valued at approximately US$389.8 million at the time of the transactions, was deposited to AudiA6 crypto wallets since the service was launched in 2021.
Law enforcement also traced transactions on the service to known darknet markets, ransomware organizations, cybercrime services and other illicit sources.
The complaint alleged that Tkachuk and Ledenev are senior members of the AudiA6 organization and the Dark2Web cybercrime forum.
Alongside the arrests, the service and its infrastructure — including its servers, domains, and websites on both the clear web and the dark web — was dismantled, its Telegram accounts were blocked, and crypto assets were seized, in a joint action amid parallel investigations by the U.S. Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service, Europol, Eurojust and other international law enforcement agencies in Australia, Canada, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Poland, Switzerland and the U.K.
Tkachuk, a Ukrainian, and Ledenev, a Russian, have been arrested in Georgia, and are facing extradition to the U.S.
The allegations against them have not been proven.