Do you know for sure that this is related to btc-e ? It's the most likely suspect (it is currently 'down for maintenance' and it was started in 2011, the same year mentioned in the AP story), but I can't find any concrete evidence of who the owners of btc-e actually were.
>A Russian national arrested in Greece on Wednesday on suspicion of laundering criminal funds by switching them into bitcoins is a key person behind the BTC-e crypto-currency exchange, two sources close to the exchange told Reuters.
BTC-E was run out of Bulgaria in the beginning, surprised this guy didn't learn from the dozens of arrests of Russian credit card processors who violated US gambling laws and went on vacation/lured to meetings into extradition areas like Greece or Turkey. This arrest was apparently over laundering Ransomware coins http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/07/26/btc-e-responsible-launderi...
BTC-E was famous for it's one word replies to technical support tickets like "works" and "try" when he wanted you to try something again, and of course the troll box on the front page that was a never ending source of problems like naive users being fished for information on their account details or tricked into pumping up the value of some altcoin.
Another interesting coincidence - yesterday Forbes published article namedropping BTC-e in a really bad way:
>As for where the criminals are cashing out, 95 per cent of ransom funds were cashed out at the Russian exchange BTC-E. That chimes with the indication that the biggest ransomware types are the produce of the biggest organized criminal gangs working out of Russia.
The only other possible bitcoin enterprise fitting their description may be bitmixer but I don't think it started in 2011 and I am certain it has not handled $4bn in transactions, btce probably has.
The site has always hidden its origins, and the only information I could find was that the founders' names are supposedly Aleksey and Alexander, based on https://www.coindesk.com/btc-e-recent-issues-caused-surge-us...