On Thursday, September 17, 2026, the United States government filed a complaint in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia seeking the forfeiture of approximately 23,067,340 USDT and 5,011.03 BNB, cryptocurrency assets tied to Garantex, a sanctioned Russian cryptocurrency exchange accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for cybercriminals, ransomware groups, and sanctioned entities.
According to the civil forfeiture complaint, the USDT (Tether) was seized from 91 Garantex operating wallets in May 2025, while the BNB (Binance Coin) was taken from a Binance account in July 2025. Both assets are now held by the U.S. Secret Service. The government alleges the funds were involved in a conspiracy to commit money laundering in violation of federal law.
Garantex, founded in 2019 and operated primarily from Russia, was sanctioned by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2022 after processing more than $100 million in transactions tied to illicit actors and darknet markets, including funds linked to the Conti ransomware group and the Hydra darknet marketplace. Two of its executives, Aleksej Besciokov and Aleksandr Mira Serda, were criminally indicted in February 2025; prosecutors say Besciokov has since died.
The complaint details how Garantex allegedly continued operating after sanctions by using U.S. cryptocurrency infrastructure and rapidly rotating its operational “hot wallets”—sometimes changing them every 20 minutes—to evade detection by law enforcement and compliance systems at other exchanges. Prosecutors say this practice had no legitimate business purpose and was designed to frustrate monitoring efforts.
Court filings cite blockchain analytics firms including Chainalysis, Elliptic and TRM Labs, which found that Garantex received millions of dollars from ransomware operations such as Black Basta and Conti, as well as funds connected to child sexual abuse material, terrorism financing and narcotics trafficking. One analysis found that 6.1% of Garantex’s incoming deposits during a 2022 sample period came from illicit sources—twenty times the rate seen at legitimate exchanges.
The complaint also alleges Garantex used a “nested exchange” relationship with Binance, operating through an account linked to deceased Garantex co-founder Stanislav Drugalev to access liquidity and process transactions, including at least one flagged as tied to a darknet market.
Internal Garantex records cited in the complaint reportedly show administrators were aware of suspicious activity but frequently reinstated flagged accounts. Of roughly 15,000 transactions given the highest possible risk score by a monitoring tool between 2019 and 2022, only 1.6% were rejected.
The filing also references a Wall Street Journal report in which a Russian arms dealer described using Garantex and Tether to evade sanctions, and cites a purported statement from a Garantex spokesperson thanking him for the endorsement.
The government is pursuing forfeiture under federal money laundering statutes, arguing the seized assets were instrumental to Garantex’s operations and represent proceeds mixed with criminal funds.
The case does not name individual claimants but allows interested parties to contest the forfeiture in court.
Please contact BlockTribune for access to a copy of this filing.
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