Exchange BTC-e promises to return bitcoins to customers

Exchange BTC-e released a statement on the Bitcointalk forum after the site was taken offline by US law enforcement agencies. In it, the site promises to return all users their coins, as long as they have not been confiscated.

In the message published Monday, which was also sent via BTC-e’s official Twitter account: Scattered, it says that the next 1 to 2 weeks should reveal “how much money has fallen into the hands of the FBI and what part is available to return.” Moving on, the post claims that “everyone gets their funds back.” In addition, the statement states that on July 25, the FBI seized all equipment in the data center hosting BTC-e. The site’s domain was subsequently acquired on June 28 and still bears the notice that it was seized by U.S. law enforcement.

The statement also addresses the arrest of a Russian suspected of laundering $4 billion via bitcoins. BTC-e claims that the suspect “never headed the service” and that he was not an employee of the exchange.

The Russian was arrested in Greece last Tuesday. In addition to his role as manager of the exchange, the man is said to have been involved in the theft at Mt. Gox, which took place from 2011 onwards, according to a statement from the American Public Prosecution Service, which links BTC-e to criminal activities. Research by Google, among others, recently claimed that criminals behind ransomware used BTC-e to convert bitcoins into traditional currency in 95 percent of the cases.

The announcement on the site of BTC-e site