A Moscow court has sentenced Artyom Chekalin, the former husband of blogger Valeriya Chekalina — known online as Lerchek — to seven years in a general-regime penal colony. The court found him guilty of conducting currency transactions to transfer funds to non-resident accounts using fraudulent documents.

Prosecutors said Chekalin transferred more than 250 million rubles from Russia to the UAE, money earned from the sale of Lerchek’s online fitness marathons.

The court also fined him 194.5 million rubles. Chekalin was taken into custody in the courtroom, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.

His defense plans to appeal the verdict. In his final statement, Chekalin said he had complied with Russian law and asked the court to impose a suspended sentence if it found him guilty.

Artyom and Valeriya Chekalina — who was among the Russian bloggers Forbes ranked as the highest-earning on Instagram — were charged in 2023 with tax evasion and money laundering. By March 2024, both criminal cases against the Chekalins had been dropped.

In October 2024, the Chekalins — who had by then divorced — became subjects of a third criminal case, this one involving the alleged illegal transfer of funds out of Russia.

Valeriya Chekalina, who was under house arrest, gave birth to her fourth child in February 2026. In March, her partner Luis Squicciarini announced that she had been diagnosed with cancer. In a filing submitted by Chekalina’s defense to the Investigative Committee, her lawyers said she had been denied access to medical care, noting that more than 10 requests for permission to visit a doctor had been submitted.

On March 6, a Moscow court lifted Chekalina’s house arrest due to her cancer diagnosis and suspended proceedings in her case until she is able to participate in the trial.