The founder of the CoinFlux cryptocurrency exchange will be extradited to the United States after the Romanian Supreme Court confirmed the decision, according to reporting from Mediafax. Vlad Nistor has been accused by authorities in the United States of charges related to organized crime, money laundering, and fraud.
CryptoGlobe reported on the arrest of Nistor in Cluj, Romania, back in December. He was apprehended with the help of four agents from the U.S. Secret Services, which sparked some controversy in the European nation. One news outlet in the country wrote that the participation of agents from the United States was illegal under Romanian law.
Fighting Against An Extradition Request
Prosecutors in the United States claimed Nistor was cheating American citizens through their bitcoin transactions. Mediafax reported one Secret Service agent accused the CoinFlux founder of helping a group launder money illicitly acquired by cheating.
Nistor’s lawyer, Anatol Panzaru, pushed back on this allegation. Panzaru asserted how Nistor would not be able to know if money flowing through CoinFlux was tied to criminality. Panzaru argued his client could not be extradited to the United States because the crimes alleged by authorities did not have a correspondent in Romanian law.
He said this was a condition stipulated in the judicial cooperation treaty between the United States and Romania.
CoinFlux Purportedly Working On Returning Money
Activity from the exchange has been quiet since the arrest of Nistor. Trading on the website is still disabled after the CoinFlux team said in December that crypto exchanges would be halted temporarily “due to a recently started, unexpected investigation.”
On December 15, CoinFlux penned a blog post that detailed the steps taken to return money from CoinFlux wallets back to client bank accounts. The exchange wrote that it informed the MisterTango financial institution about customers who have blocked moneyon the cryptocurrency exchange. It asked for the funds to be returned to the owners in an expedient manner.
The CoinFlux team promised future updates, but there have not been any new developments so far. A couple of commenters on CoinFlux’s Twitter page have asked for details about the status of blocked funds.
