US DOJ With a Bounty Totaling Up to $6M For Defunct Exchange Garantex Leaders

United States authorities have unveiled a massive reward for any information provided regarding the management members of the Garantex crypto exchange.

After operating for years and facilitating billions of transactions involving cybercriminals, the now rebranded entity is under heavy fire.

Substantial Reward

The Office of the Spokesperson for the US Department of State issued a statement yesterday, announcing that it is targeting the now-obsolete Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, which was allegedly used by a variety of criminals carrying out cybercrime and money laundering within its network.

The department’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program (TOCRP) has prepared two rewards, totaling up to $6 million, for any information that leads to the arrest or conviction of Garantex executives. This is split between up to $5M for Russian national Aleksandr Mira Serda, co-owner and CCO, and up to $1 million for other key leaders of the exchange.

OFAC, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, is taking steps to redesignate Garantex and designate its successor, Grinex, which remains operational. This followed Tether’s interference, which involved blocking wallets associated with the exchange and seizing USDT assets earlier this year.

German and Finnish authorities also aided by seizing their domain and freezing over $26 million in digital assets controlled by Garantex. OFAC will also be naming three executives from the exchange and six affiliated companies in Russia and the Kyrgyz Republic.

As per reports from the FBI and U.S. Secret Service, between April 2019 and March 2025, the exchange processed at least $96 billion in crypto transactions. It also received hundreds of millions in proceeds from the criminals using it to carry out a range of crimes, including terrorism, drug trafficking, ransoms, and others, oftentimes, causing significant harm to victims from the United States.

Known Facts

Garantex was founded at the end of 2019 and registered in Estonia. Most of its operations were conducted from Moscow and St. Petersburg. In February 2022, it lost its license for providing digital asset services after Estonia’s Financial Intelligence Unit (EFIU) unveiled serious deficiencies in its laws against money laundering and terrorist financing, as wallets linked to criminal activity were discovered.

After the EFIU enforcement and OFAC’s designation, the exchange created an infrastructure designed to prevent institutions from accrediting wallet addresses back to them, in an attempt to evade sanctions. This allowed them to continue providing services to various entities involved in criminal activities.

A known money launderer, Ekaterina Zhdanova, has reportedly funneled over $2 million in Bitcoin to the USDT stablecoin using the exchange. She is currently being pursued under an executive order from November 2023 for conducting financial operations or services in the world’s largest country.

In March 2025, the US DOJ unsealed indictments against the CCO and Aleksej Besciokov, a known executive. Following this, the latter was arrested in India, while the former remains at large.