Gotbit Founder Indicted in Alleged Crypto Wash-Trading Scheme

Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts announced on October 31, 2024 that Gotbit founder and chief executive Aleksei Andriunin had been charged in a superseding indictment alleging a cryptocurrency market-manipulation and wire-fraud conspiracy.

The 18-page charging document in *United States v. Gotbit Consulting LLC et al.*, case 24-CR-10190-AK, named four defendants: Gotbit, Andriunin, market-making director Fedor Kedrov and sales director Qawi Jalili. Count One alleged conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud. Counts Two and Three alleged wire fraud.

The filing mattered because it placed Gotbit’s founder inside the same criminal case as the company and two directors. On October 9, prosecutors had announced charges against Gotbit, Kedrov and Jalili while identifying Andriunin in a separate criminal complaint. The October 31 indictment consolidated the government’s allegations against Gotbit’s leadership into a single prosecution.

What prosecutors alleged

The indictment alleged that the scheme operated from approximately 2018 through June 2024. Prosecutors said Gotbit publicly presented itself as a legitimate cryptocurrency market maker while privately offering clients manipulative trading intended to increase token prices and reported volume.

According to the charging document, the alleged strategy included entering offsetting buy and sell orders through different accounts, creating trading activity without corresponding organic demand. Prosecutors alleged that Gotbit sought lower exchange fees to make this activity cheaper, used multiple wallets to conceal proceeds and received payments from cryptocurrency companies seeking greater apparent market activity.

Andriunin allegedly described the underlying technique in a 2019 online interview. The indictment said he explained that an algorithm could place a buy order from one account while simultaneously placing a sell order from another. Prosecutors also alleged that Gotbit maintained internal records comparing volume it had created with naturally occurring market volume and the fees clients paid.

Those statements are allegations contained in a grand-jury indictment, not judicial findings. The filing established what the government charged; it did not establish guilt or independently validate every transaction described by prosecutors.

Robo Inu illustrated the market-integrity concern

The indictment used the Ethereum-based Robo Inu token as a detailed example. It alleged that Gotbit personnel discussed gradually increasing volume so the token’s market would appear organic and so CoinMarketCap would not exclude suspicious activity.

For March 6, 2024, prosecutors alleged that Gotbit traders generated more than $1 million of daily Robo Inu volume, helping the token appear on CoinMarketCap’s trending list. That amount is a government allegation tied to the cited day, not a Coinburn calculation or an independently reconstructed exchange total.

The SEC had filed a parallel civil action against Gotbit and Kedrov on October 15. The agency alleged that a bot sometimes produced more than $1 million in artificial Robo Inu volume per day and that the activity was intended to create a false appearance of an active market. The civil complaint and criminal indictment involved different legal claims and burdens of proof, even though they described overlapping conduct.

Why the case mattered beyond one token

Reported trading volume influences token rankings, exchange-listing decisions, liquidity assessments and investor perceptions. The allegations therefore exposed a structural weakness in fragmented crypto markets: a numerical volume figure can appear objective even when the underlying trades may not represent independent buyers and sellers.

The October 31 record does not support a conclusion that all market makers, exchanges or aggregator statistics were unreliable. It also does not quantify losses across the wider cryptocurrency market. What it established was narrower: federal prosecutors had formally accused the founder and senior personnel of one prominent service provider of selling manufactured market activity to token issuers.

All defendants remained presumed innocent on October 31, 2024. Subsequent pleas, judgments, penalties or forfeiture proceedings were not knowable from the event-day record and are excluded from this reconstruction.