Founder of Liberty Reserve virtual currency sentenced to 20 years in prison
The founder of now defunct virtual currency Liberty Reserve has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for using his company to run a huge money laundering scheme catering to cybercriminals.
Arthur Budovsky, 42, was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, with Judge Denise Cote also ordering him to pay a US $500,000 fine.
In January, Budovsky pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit money laundering. During sentencing, Cote noted Budovsky ran an "extraordinarily successful" and "large-scale international money laundering operation."
The long sentence shows that "money laundering through the use of virtual currencies is still money laundering, and that online crime is still crime," Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division, said in a press release.
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