Sep 23, 2014/Bloomberg

The former information technology manager of Liberty Reserve SA, which prosecutors say was a “black-market bank” that masked more than $6 billion in criminal proceeds, pleaded guilty to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

Maxim Chukharev, 28, worked with the company’s former chief technology officer, Mark Marmilev, at Liberty Reserve in Costa Rica to maintain computer infrastructure, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement today. Marmilev pleaded guilty Sept. 11.

Chukharev entered his plea today before U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan federal court, prosecutors said. He’s the fourth person connected to Liberty Reserve to plead guilty. Charges are pending against three others, including Liberty Reserve founder Arthur Budovsky.

Chukharev is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 30.

Liberty Reserve, incorporated in Costa Rica, was one of the world’s most widely used digital currency services, according to the U.S. The company was created and structured “as a criminal business venture, one designed to help criminals conduct illegal transactions,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. Prosecutors shut down the company last year.

Liberty Reserve had an estimated 1 million users around the world and conducted a total of about 55 million transactions — almost all of them illegal — including 200,000 in the U.S., Bharara said. U.S. investigators have found that criminal rings used Liberty Reserve to distribute illicit proceeds from Vietnam, Nigeria, Hong Kong, China and the U.S.

The company helped users launder illegal proceeds from crimes or transfer funds among associates, prosecutors said. Liberty Reserve’s digital currency was used by people committing identity theft, credit card fraud, computer hacking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking, prosecutors said.

The case is U.S. v. Kats, 13-cr-00368, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).