Alleged cyber-criminal Alexander Vinnik, a Russian national who was recently arrested in Greece and is thought to be the mastermind behind the laundering of at least 4 billion euros via bitcoin crypto-currency online platforms, appeared before the Piraeus Misdemeanors Court on Wednesday to appeal for his extradition for trial in Russia, on humanitarian grounds.  
Vinnik, 39, who has been on hunger strike for 90 days, was taken to court in an ambulance. 
Dubbed 'Mr. Bitcoin', he has already been indicted by a US jury on money laundering charges, as acting on behalf of digital criminal rings involving drug trafficking and computer hacking as the founder and operator of the BTC-e internet digital curency exchange platform, which was active since 2011. 
The United States, Russia and France have separately issued extradition requests against him. 
It was the US Justice Department's criminal investigation that led to Vinnik's arrest at a small village in northern Greece in July 2017. 
Alexander Vinnik is legally represented in Greece by lawyer and politician Zoe Konstantopoulou, who spoke to Athens-Macedonian News Agency, saying the charges against him, as depicted in the legal documennts drafted in the US, are too vague and do not contain enough specific facts to render him guilty beyond any doubt. 
Konstantopoulou added that the offences he is charged for do not establish Vinnik as the perpetrator, and went on to say that his BTC-e platform dealt in bitcoins, which, she said, "banks and bankers might not like, but (it) is indeed a financial tool for the economic liberation of citizens and people at large, and is used by 700,000 people worldwide."
In Vinnik's defense, Zoe Konstantopoulou said that "there may be people, among the aforementioned 700K users, who committed criminal offenses, and we could not prove this or preclude it. It is a pity how the platform's technician is being held responsible for the crimes of these people," describing Vinnik as a mere 'technician'.
She also pointed out that her client is being detained since July 25, 2017, violating the maximum 18-month pretrial detention foreseen by law, after which a defendant must be released.