On Thursday, one of the seven men associated with digital currency service Liberty Reserve pled guilty to money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, among other charges.

As we reported at the time of its May 2013 shutdown, Liberty Reserve was preferred by many members of the online underworld, including a booter site used to attack Ars in March 2013.

“Vladimir Kats, by his own admission, helped to create and operate an anonymous digital currency system that provided cybercriminals and others with the means to launder criminal proceeds on an unprecedented scale,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman said in a statement. “His conviction reinforces what we said when Liberty Reserve was first brought down: banking systems that allow criminals to conduct illegal transactions anonymously will not be allowed to stand, and professional money launderers will be brought to justice.”

Kats is considered to be one of the company's cofounders, but authorities say he "helped operate the company until in or about 2009," and he was arrested as part of the global seizure in May 2013.

Federal authorities seized LibertyReserve.com and four other related domain names, effectively putting an end to the site. The site’s founder, Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk (who apparently renounced his US citizenship in 2011 to become a Costa Rican citizen), was arrested just before the shutdown.

In the 27-page indictment (PDF), the defendants were charged with money laundering and conspiracy to operate unlicensed money transmitting business. They are ordered to surrender "all property, real and personal,” including “at least $6 billion” and tens of millions of dollars more allegedly contained within bank accounts across Costa Rica, Cyprus, Russia, Hong Kong, Morocco, China, Spain, Latvia, and Australia. The government alleges that Liberty Reserve had over a million users, including 200,000 in the United States.

As a result of the five charges Kats pled guilty to, he could be facing a maximum sentence of 75 years in prison. The charges against the six others are still pending.