OFAC Listed 23 Crypto Addresses in Election-Interference Sanctions

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added 23 cryptocurrency addresses to its sanctions records on September 10, 2020, identifying them with two employees of Russia’s Internet Research Agency. The addresses covered Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash, Bitcoin SV and Dash.

The action mattered because it translated a geopolitical sanctions designation into identifiers that cryptocurrency exchanges, custodians and other compliance teams could screen. A blockchain address could now appear alongside names, passport details and other identifying information in OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals record.

Treasury alleged that the Internet Research Agency, or IRA, used cryptocurrency to fund influence operations around the world. That was an attributed government claim; the September 10 public records did not provide transaction histories, balances or an independently reproducible account of how much cryptocurrency financed those operations.

The addresses were identifiers, not frozen coins

OFAC designated three Russian nationals—Artem Lifshits, Anton Andreyev and Darya Aslanova—for acting for or on behalf of the IRA. Its list associated cryptocurrency addresses with Andreyev and Lifshits but published none for Aslanova.

The address inventory comprised 14 Bitcoin addresses, three Ethereum addresses, three Litecoin addresses, and one address each for Zcash, Bitcoin SV and Dash. OFAC used “XBT” for Bitcoin in the listing. These counts are a calculation from the identifiers published in the agency’s September 10 update, not a measurement of active wallets, unique owners or transactions.

The legal effect applied to the designated people and their property interests subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Their property was blocked, U.S. persons were generally prohibited from transacting with them, and entities owned 50% or more by designated persons were also blocked.

Publishing an address did not disable it at the protocol level or erase assets recorded on a public blockchain. Nor did the list establish that every future transaction involving an address was initiated personally by the named individual. Its practical effect arose at regulated or sanctions-conscious intermediaries capable of rejecting transactions, restricting accounts or reporting blocked property.

A parallel criminal case described exchange accounts

The Justice Department separately announced on September 10 that a criminal complaint charged Lifshits with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors alleged that Project Lakhta participants used stolen identities belonging to real U.S. people to open fraudulent accounts at banks and cryptocurrency exchanges.

According to the department, Lifshits served as a manager in Project Lakhta, an influence operation that worked through entities including the IRA. Prosecutors alleged that the accounts supported foreign-influence activity and personal enrichment.

Those statements described allegations, not a conviction. The Justice Department expressly noted that a criminal complaint was only an accusation and that Lifshits was presumed innocent unless proven guilty. The complaint nevertheless added institutional context to OFAC’s address listings: the government was examining not only public blockchain identifiers but also identity controls and account opening at cryptocurrency businesses.

What the event-day record established

The defensible September 10 conclusion is narrow. OFAC designated three IRA employees, associated 23 cryptocurrency addresses with two of them and imposed the consequences of its blocking rules. Treasury also designated Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Derkach in the wider election-interference action, but OFAC’s September 10 entry did not associate cryptocurrency addresses with him.

The records did not disclose address balances, transaction volumes, exchange names, custody arrangements or the value of property actually blocked. They also did not demonstrate a cryptocurrency-market price reaction. No market-return or on-chain-value claim is therefore made in this reconstruction.

The development’s significance was regulatory rather than quantitative: sanctions screening had reached identifiable activity across six cryptocurrency networks, making blockchain addresses operational compliance data in a national-security action.