Russia sentences Hydra marketplace founder to life in prison

Russian authorities have sentenced Stanislav Moiseyev, the founder of criminal drugs platform Hydra, to life in prison after charging him with organizing a criminal drugs enterprise.

Russia’s state-run news agency reported that Moiseyev was fined 4 million rubles (~$37,000) and sentenced alongside 15 other accomplices by a Moscow court. These accomplices were fined a total of 16 million rubles (~$150,000) and received prison sentences ranging from eight to 23 years.

Hydra operated out of Russia and Belarus between 2015 and 2018. In 2021, Chainalysis reported that the group processed almost $3.2 billion worth of crypto through various “high-risk” crypto exchanges. Crystal Blockchain also found that $780 million was transacted between Binance and Hydra.

Law enforcement reportedly seized a ton of drugs from the Hydra organization. Moiseyev and his accomplices will reportedly be imprisoned in special and strict regime penal colonies (overcrowded prisons that have been described as the harshest in Russia).

Hydra, which was seized and shut down by the US in 2022, was one of Garantex’s largest counterparties and sent $60 million to the exchange between 2019 and 2021. Garantex founder Sergey Mendeleev launched a Tether desk last year.

Hydra, alongside Binance and the Russian Ponzi scheme “The Finiko,” were the top three counterparties of Bitzlato, a crypto exchange that processed over $700 million worth of illicit funds. Bitzlato’s founder pleaded guilty to operating an illicit money-transmitting business a year ago.