According to court documents, for the past 10 years, Roman Sterlingov allegedly operated Bitcoin Fog, a so-called cryptocurrency “tumbler” or “mixer” service.
Bitcoin Fog allegedly even publicly advertised the service on Twitter as a way to help users conceal the source of their bitcoin, and charged a fee for the service.
The website is allegedly one of the original Bitcoin mixing sites on the darknet, and more than 1.2 million bitcoins worth approximately $335.8 million have moved through the site since it began operation.
For example, someone can create multiple Bitcoin addresses to receive payments from different customers.
The court documents also said that Bitcoin Fog charges a fee of 2% to 2.5% on each deposit, and that based on the service’s transaction activity over time, Sterlingov would have made approximately $8 million in commissions from the transactions if he had cashed out the administrative fees when the transactions occurred.