Liberty Reserve creator was given 20 years in prison

On Friday, a US court sentenced Arthur Budovsky, 42, the creator of the Liberty Reserve electronic payment system, to 20 years in prison. The court ruled that the system worked illegally and was used, in particular, to launder the proceeds of crime.

From 2002 to 2006, Budowski, being a US citizen, managed, together with Vladimir Katz, GoldAge, the online digital currency exchanger . The service provided exchange services for various digital currencies, including e-gold , a digital currency pegged to gold.

In 2006, GoldAge was closed, and a couple were arrested on charges of fraud. They were given a conditional sentence of 5 years, after which Budovsky fled from the USA to Costa Rica, and married a local resident there in 2010. Having received citizenship of the country in 2012, he refused American citizenship.

Arriving in Costa Rica, Budovsky opened a new company for working with digital money, Liberty Reserve. The service provided the services of storing and transferring funds, and for the registration and operation of the system, it was necessary to specify only the e-mail, name and date of birth.
')
Such a liberal policy towards customers attracted a large number of dark personalities who used the service for the transfer of not entirely clean money. The system itself used virtual currencies - LR-dollars and LR-euros, as well as the currency pegged to gold. For transfers, the system charged 1% of the amount, with no refund provided.

In 2009, the Costa Rican government became interested in the system, and by 2011, the company had its license withdrawn. Periodically, up to 2013, the authorities arrested the company's accounts. After experts from the United States connected to the investigation, in 2013 the system was closed.

At this point Liberty Reserve had a million users, 200,000 of whom were US citizens. In a year, the system conducted 12 million transactions. According to some reports , a total of $ 6 billion in crime was passed through the system.

Budovsky was not helped by the citizenship of Costa Rica - in 2014, he and several accomplices were arrested in Spain, and extradited to the United States.