In the United States in absentia brought accusation to the Russian hackers who stole 36 million dollars under the guise of selling advertising
Moscow-Live.ru
The United States authorities in absentia charged with Internet fraud six citizens of Russia and two citizens of Kazakhstan, according to the Prosecutor’s office of the Eastern district of new York. The damage in the tens of millions of dollars.
“The indictment includes 13 items, was charged today in Federal court in Brooklyn,” reads a press releasepublished on the website of the Prosecutor’s office on Tuesday.
According to prosecutors, the accused included the Russians Alexander Zhukov, Boris Timokhin, Michael Andreev, Denis Avdeev, Dmitry Novikov, Alexander Isaev. Also we are talking about the citizens of Kazakhstan – Sergey Ovsyannikov and Eugenia Timchenko.
The press release notes that Ovsyannikov was arrested in October in Malaysia. Zhukov was arrested in early November in Bulgaria, and Timchenko – in Estonia. They are currently awaiting extradition to the United States. The other defendants in the case currently remain at large.
The alleged swindlers have earned about $ 36 million by selling online advertising. To convince buyers that the advertising campaign was actually carried out, the scammers used fake websites and fake online users United in a botnet (network of bots). It included 1.7 million computers that are infected. In the end, the attackers managed to falsify billions of views of Internet pages and placed them on ads and commercials.
Under this scheme between September 2014 and December 2016 beetles, Timokhin, Andreev, Avdeev, Novikov and Ovsyannikov took over seven millions of dollars, which was paid for imaginary advertising campaign on the Internet.
In the period from December 2015 to October 2018 Ovsyannikov, Gennady Timchenko and the Isayev ran another bodett created in a similar way. This time the cybercriminals earned $ 29 million.
Note to infect computers and create a botnet, attackers used a virus Kovter. Usually the infection occurred when you visit the porn site Pornhub, writes Forbes.
The accomplices to these crimes are charged with fraud, intrusion into computer systems, identity theft and money laundering. The investigation involved the U.S. Department of justice and the FBI.