Iurii Gugnin, 38, is a citizen of Russia and a resident of Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Before he was born, the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (BSA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) became federal laws.
On October 26, 1970, 37th U.S. president Richard Nixon signed the BSA into law. The act requires financial institutions to report suspicious activity that may signify criminal activities such as money laundering and tax evasion.
On December 28, 1977, 39th U.S. president Jimmy Carter signed the IEEPA into law. The act authorizes the U.S. president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual and extraordinary threat to the country which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the country.
Iuri Gugnin
Gugnin is the founder, president, treasurer and compliance officer of Evita Investments and Evita Pay. Both companies are based in the U.S.
Using Evita Investments and Evita Pay, Gugnin allegedly enabled foreign customers to provide him with cryptocurrency, which he then laundered through cryptocurrency wallets and U.S. bank accounts. Many of the customers held funds at sanctioned Russian banks.
On behalf of the customers, Gugnin ultimately converted the funds into U.S. dollars or other fiat currencies and made payments through bank accounts in Manhattan. The sources of the funds were obscured, the audit trail was disguised and the true counterparties to the transactions were hidden in the process.
Between June 2023 and January 2025, Gugnin used Evita Pay to facilitate the movement of around $530 million through the U.S. financial system. He received most of the money in the form of a cryptocurrency stablecoin called Tether or USDT.
When Gugnin converted funds and made wire transfers through various banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, he claimed that Evita Pay neither conducted business with entities in Russia nor dealt with sanctioned entities. But in fact, many of his customers were located in Russia and he facilitated payments in funds held at JSC Tinkoff Bank, JSC Sberbank, PJSC Sovcombank and PJSC VTB Bank, which are sanctioned Russian banks.
Despite claiming that Evita Pay followed anti-money laundering and know-your-customer requirements, Gugnin flouted these requirements and the requirement to file reports of suspicious activities with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. He neither implemented his cryptocurrency company’s own purported anti-money laundering program nor filed suspicious activity reports as required under the BSA.
On June 9, 2025, Gugnin was arrested and arraigned in New York. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York City charged him with bank fraud, wire fraud, violation of the IEEPA, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering compliance program and failing to file suspicious activity reports.
The Russian man was ordered held without bail pending trial. Also known as Iurii Mashukov and George Goognin, he maintained ties to Russian intelligence and officials in Iran and Russia, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
CONAN Daily 