This is what they are being charged with.

COUNT ONE (Conspiracy to Violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act)

COUNT TWO (Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering)

I do think it's a strong possibility the Founders cooperated against the two Russians.

The indictment says the founders knew the investor were Russians even though they were telling Tim Pool and Benny Johnson that it was a french guy. There was absolutely no internet presence for this guy Even though he was supposed to be a high executive and a French bank.

When they got paid none of the money came from this supposedly French guys company

U.S. Company-I received its 30 inbound wire transfers from seven foreign entities - none of which were U. S. Company-l ' s contract counterpart.

And the two Russians who supposedly were just editing and production staff were dictating what content the company should put out.

So the two founders had to know what the deal was.

I see the two possibilities as the two founders were hit with a sealed indictment and then cooperated.

Or

The two founders were basically in on it but had enough plausible deniability that they might not get a conviction.

I hadn't thought about this

do you think there are other characters behind the scenes?

But looking up one of the founders she has a lot of other interesting connections.