Belarus-born Anastasia Vashukevich and seven other defendants unexpectedly pleaded guilty at the start of their trial on Tuesday on charges including soliciting prostitution and "forming and being a member of a secret society."
They were each sentenced to 18 months in jail but they were released to serve the remainder of their sentence on parole.
The eight members of the group were put on a commercial flight to Moscow from Bangkok on Thursday, according to Thailand's immigration chief Lt. General Surachate Hakparn.
Hakparn told CNN that Vasukevich and another Belarusian group member would then transit home to Belarus.
Vashukevich made headlines last year when she publicly asked the United States to help free her from a Thai detention center in exchange for information on alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Vashukevich, who goes by the name Nastya Rybka on her social media accounts, was part of a group -- led by author and free sex advocate Alexander Kirillov -- which was arrested last February in the Thai resort town of Pattaya while running so-called sex training sessions.
It is not known whether Russian officials are interested in speaking to Vashukevich or Kirillov, who had claimed to CNN in March that after stumbling upon evidence of Russian government meddling in the 2016 US election, they were in danger of knowing too much.
"They can kill me here or in Russia," Vashukevich said at the time, speaking through the bars of the Bangkok Immigration Detention Center.
Claims of insider knowledge
Vashukevich claims to be the former mistress of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, an ex-business associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
She told CNN from the detention center last March that she witnessed several meetings in 2016 and 2017 between Deripaska and at least three unnamed Americans. She refused to name them but said she had photographs of one of the Americans and more than an hour of audio recordings.
Vashukevich and Kirillov told CNN they were afraid to reveal potentially compromising information in the event they are deported to Russia, where they are believed to have been previously based.
Deripaska -- who denies any affair -- is a subject of political intrigue in US political circles, owing to his links with Manafort. The aluminum baron has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and was recently included on a US Treasury Department list of Russian government officials and 96 oligarchs with a net worth of $1 billion or more.
When he was confronted by CNN in 2017, Deripaska called allegations that he may have been a back channel from the Kremlin to the Trump campaign "fake news."
Regarding his alleged relationship with Vashukevich, a representative for Deripaska told CNN last March: "This is clearly an attempt by Anastasia Vashukevich (aka Nastya Rybka) to politicize the accusations of the Thai police. There have been endless fictitious stories told by her, all serving to distract the public from real violations, including very serious breaches of law of many countries."
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