Russians facing 15 yrs for $4 mln extortion from U.K. companies
September 30th, 2006
A sentence will be announced Monday for three Russian hackers in the Saratov Region, 530 miles southeast of Moscow, accused of extorting $4 million from world Internet companies, a public prosecutor said Friday.
“Three Russian nationals – Balakovo resident Ivan Maksakov, Astrakhan resident Alexander Petrov and St. Petersburg resident Denis Stepanov – are charged with committing a number of computer crimes via the Internet, and extorting money from several U.K. companies,” Anton Pakhomov said.
He said the hackers collected information about British web casinos and bookmaker’s offices, and then demanded ransoms from the owners, threatening to disrupt the operation of their web servers.
“The web server of Canbet Sports Bookmakers Ltd, which refused to pay a $10,000 ransom, was blocked during the Breeders’ Cup races, and the company lost more than $200,000 for each day of downtime,” the source said.
Investigators said the criminal group received more than $4 million from U.K. companies. The prosecutor said the group made 54 similar attacks in 30 countries for the six months they were active.
Maksakov and Stepanov were detained in September 2004 thanks to the joint efforts of Britain’s National High Tech Crime Unit, Interpol, the FBI and Russia’s Interior Ministry and Prosecutor General’s Office. Petrov was arrested in mid-2005, Pakhomov said.
Each of the three faces charges on 19 articles of the Russian Criminal Code, with a punishment of up to 15 years in prison.
Entry Filed under: Bookie News & Bonuses,General Banter
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