As the hero of one of Vladimir Vysotsky's early songs wisely remarked, reflecting on the frailty of criminal life, "but the case was not postponed, and the verdict was announced - and they gave me everything I was supposed to. Plus five was given to me by the prosecutor." Everything is the same here, but if you do not persist and agree to an agreement with the prosecutor's office, then you can safely count not on a plus, but on a minus of the verdict.
Once again, this was proved in the federal court for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland, where on January 25, Judge Solomon Oliver sentenced 40-year-old Russian Vladimir Dunaev to 5 years and 4 months in prison, who faced up to 60 years in prison for "conspiracy to commit computer fraud and aggravated identity theft."; conspiracy to commit fraud using electronic funds and banking operations; conspiracy to launder money" and several other crimes.
Arrested on May 25, 2021, at the Seoul International Airport, the capital of South Korea, Dunaev was extradited to the United States on October 20 of the same year, and on October 25 he appeared for the first time in a Cleveland court, where he was introduced to the charges and taken into custody. Dunaev is not listed in the Federal Bureau of Prisons database, which means that he has been held in a state, city, or county prison in Ohio for more than two years, at the expense of the federal authorities, of course. "This sentence," said Judge Oliver, 76, Assistant Secretary of Justice for Criminal Affairs Nicole Argentieri, " demonstrates the ability of our ministry to put cybercriminals behind bars no matter where they are located. Working with our partners around the world, we continue to hold cybercriminals accountable."
Rebecca Latsko, federal prosecutor for the Northern District of Ohio, said in a press release on January 25 that Dunaev developed the Trickbot "malware" and implemented it, attacking hospitals, schools and businesses in her county and across the country, hiding behind his computer. "He and his accomplices," Latsko concluded menacingly, "caused immeasurable losses and financial damage by maliciously infecting millions of computers around the world, and as a result, Dunaev will now spend more than five years behind bars. The Dunaev case demonstrates that the Ministry of Justice and our prosecutor's Office will use all available means to investigate and prosecute cybercrime, and we thank our international partners for their cooperation in helping us stop cybercriminals like Dunaev and bring them to justice."
It's a little long, but it's convincing. Moreover, the words of Latsko, who was appointed by President Biden at the beginning of last year, do not differ from the case, according to which 10 objects, including schools in the suburbs of Cleveland and a real estate company in the city of New Canton, totaled $ 3.4 million, were damaged by Dunaev's "evil spirit" in the Northern District of Ohio. In addition, in July 2020, Dunaev attacked the computer of the local government of one of the cities of the state of Tennessee, disabling communication with the ambulance and police there, and in May 2021, his "sinister" invaded the database of the Scripps Health hospital in California. Brian Vorndran, assistant Director of the FBI's Cybercrime Division, and Greg Nelsen, head of the Cleveland division, expressed their views on this in a press release from the prosecutor's office. The former once again reminded that the fight against malicious " cyber players "is a team sport, while the latter said that" this case and the subsequent verdict clearly let cybercriminals and other evil players who attack individuals and businesses with malicious intentions know.
According to the 60-page indictment, Vladimir Dunaev was one of the members of the same cybercrime organization that infected computers with malicious Trickbot software from November 2015 to August 2020. According to Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, the program "was designed to steal the personal and financial information of millions of people around the world, thereby causing extensive financial damage and causing significant damage to infrastructure in the United States and abroad." Six other people are being tried in Dunaev's case, whose names are covered up in the indictment, with the exception of 58-year-old Alla Witte, a citizen of Russia and Latvia, who was arrested in Miami in February, pleaded guilty in June, was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison, and is now also being held in custody, but not in custody. in a federal prison.
"Defendants Vladimir Dunaev, aka FFX, Alla Witte, aka MAX, and others known to the grand jury as the 'Trickbot Group', " the case calls "participants in a criminal conspiracy of fraudsters located in or around Russia." According to Deputy Justice Minister Lisa Monaco, members of this group "attacked businesses around the world, infecting millions of computers with viruses to steal data and get ransom." Specifically, the defendants a) infected their victims computers with the Trickbot virus in order to gain access to their bank accounts; b) obtained and stored other personal data, including credit card numbers, emails, passwords, dates of birth, social security card numbers, and addresses; and c) infected other computers connected to their victim's computer using the data obtained, they entered the bank accounts of their victims without permission; e) stole money from these accounts and laundered it in bank accounts controlled by the defendants and their accomplices in the United States and abroad; f) entered ransom programs into the victims ' computers.
About Vladimir Dunaev it is known that he is a native of Yakutia, which after the collapse of the USSR is part of Russia under the name of the Republic of Sakha. In February 2020, Dunaev flew from Yakutsk to South Korea, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions imposed, he could not fly home and stayed in the Country of Morning Dew, as the Republic of Korea is called, for more than a year, living in Seoul in a rented studio apartment. His Russian passport expired, and he issued a new one through the Russian Embassy in Seoul, but he did not have time to use it to return to his homeland. In May 2021, the Korean Ministry of Justice received a request from American colleagues for the extradition of Vladimir Dunaev, and he was arrested, taken into custody and placed in a pre-trial detention center. On October 15, the Seoul District Court granted the request of the American side for extradition. Dunaev was extradited on October 20, and on the same day, the South Korean Police Agency sent an arrest request to Interpol under the red flag of urgency and danger for "two foreigners who played a leading role in cyber attacks and large-scale extortion from US and South Korean companies." The names of those to be arrested were not given, but it was specified that one of them was a citizen of Ukraine and that in June 2021 he was detained there. Interestingly, the police report did not mention the arrest of Russian citizen Dunaev in Seoul on May 25 and his extradition to the United States.
Alla Witte is listed in the arrest warrant as a Russian citizen, but has lived in Latvia for a long time. Her maiden name is Klimova, she was born in 1965 in Rostov-on-Don and in 1983 moved to Riga, where she entered the University of Latvia and studied applied mathematics for several years. Her interest in programming started right away, but it didn't materialize: Alla Klimova taught mathematics, worked as a sales manager, got married, took the name of her Dutch husband, Adrian Witte, and moved with him to Amsterdam. The Witte couple traveled extensively, and in recent years settled in Suriname and lived in Paramaribo, the capital of this former Dutch colony in South America. In her CV, Alla Witte wrote that she graduated from the University of Latvia in 1988 with a Bachelor's degree in applied Mathematics and that she was one of the first specialists in the Latvian IT industry. Witte advertised her developer services to freelance communities. Since 2012, customers have noted the high quality and professionalism of her work. Presumably, it was on the site of freelancers that Alla Witte was found by members of a transnational cybercrime organization
According to the investigation, Dunaev's involvement in the Trickbot Group began on May 27, 2016, when he was contacted by email from the address department.ishteryakov@grnail. com and were given a task to check whether it is suitable for working in a group. Two days later, he completed the task of writing an application for the server, after which on May 30 he was given a second task to change the Firefox browser, the fourth most popular in the world. On June 1, Dunaev managed to do it again, and the next day he was made a full, extraordinary and plenipotentiary member of the group of cyber scammers. The indictment stated that the identified victims of the "Trickbot Group" in the United States were 9 banks, 2 school districts and 36 companies in the states of Florida, Vermont, Virginia, Texas, California, New York and Minnesota, and around the world, except for the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, and Germany were affected., India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Suriname and Russia. According to the investigation, cybercriminals operated from the territories of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Suriname, where Alla Witte lived. As the prosecutor's office estimated, in five years the Trickbot Group stole "from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars", which sounds impressive, but is not very suitable for prosecution – in criminal cases, money likes to count.
Once again, this was proved in the federal court for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland, where on January 25, Judge Solomon Oliver sentenced 40-year-old Russian Vladimir Dunaev to 5 years and 4 months in prison, who faced up to 60 years in prison for "conspiracy to commit computer fraud and aggravated identity theft."; conspiracy to commit fraud using electronic funds and banking operations; conspiracy to launder money" and several other crimes.
Arrested on May 25, 2021, at the Seoul International Airport, the capital of South Korea, Dunaev was extradited to the United States on October 20 of the same year, and on October 25 he appeared for the first time in a Cleveland court, where he was introduced to the charges and taken into custody. Dunaev is not listed in the Federal Bureau of Prisons database, which means that he has been held in a state, city, or county prison in Ohio for more than two years, at the expense of the federal authorities, of course. "This sentence," said Judge Oliver, 76, Assistant Secretary of Justice for Criminal Affairs Nicole Argentieri, " demonstrates the ability of our ministry to put cybercriminals behind bars no matter where they are located. Working with our partners around the world, we continue to hold cybercriminals accountable."
Rebecca Latsko, federal prosecutor for the Northern District of Ohio, said in a press release on January 25 that Dunaev developed the Trickbot "malware" and implemented it, attacking hospitals, schools and businesses in her county and across the country, hiding behind his computer. "He and his accomplices," Latsko concluded menacingly, "caused immeasurable losses and financial damage by maliciously infecting millions of computers around the world, and as a result, Dunaev will now spend more than five years behind bars. The Dunaev case demonstrates that the Ministry of Justice and our prosecutor's Office will use all available means to investigate and prosecute cybercrime, and we thank our international partners for their cooperation in helping us stop cybercriminals like Dunaev and bring them to justice."
It's a little long, but it's convincing. Moreover, the words of Latsko, who was appointed by President Biden at the beginning of last year, do not differ from the case, according to which 10 objects, including schools in the suburbs of Cleveland and a real estate company in the city of New Canton, totaled $ 3.4 million, were damaged by Dunaev's "evil spirit" in the Northern District of Ohio. In addition, in July 2020, Dunaev attacked the computer of the local government of one of the cities of the state of Tennessee, disabling communication with the ambulance and police there, and in May 2021, his "sinister" invaded the database of the Scripps Health hospital in California. Brian Vorndran, assistant Director of the FBI's Cybercrime Division, and Greg Nelsen, head of the Cleveland division, expressed their views on this in a press release from the prosecutor's office. The former once again reminded that the fight against malicious " cyber players "is a team sport, while the latter said that" this case and the subsequent verdict clearly let cybercriminals and other evil players who attack individuals and businesses with malicious intentions know.
According to the 60-page indictment, Vladimir Dunaev was one of the members of the same cybercrime organization that infected computers with malicious Trickbot software from November 2015 to August 2020. According to Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, the program "was designed to steal the personal and financial information of millions of people around the world, thereby causing extensive financial damage and causing significant damage to infrastructure in the United States and abroad." Six other people are being tried in Dunaev's case, whose names are covered up in the indictment, with the exception of 58-year-old Alla Witte, a citizen of Russia and Latvia, who was arrested in Miami in February, pleaded guilty in June, was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison, and is now also being held in custody, but not in custody. in a federal prison.
"Defendants Vladimir Dunaev, aka FFX, Alla Witte, aka MAX, and others known to the grand jury as the 'Trickbot Group', " the case calls "participants in a criminal conspiracy of fraudsters located in or around Russia." According to Deputy Justice Minister Lisa Monaco, members of this group "attacked businesses around the world, infecting millions of computers with viruses to steal data and get ransom." Specifically, the defendants a) infected their victims computers with the Trickbot virus in order to gain access to their bank accounts; b) obtained and stored other personal data, including credit card numbers, emails, passwords, dates of birth, social security card numbers, and addresses; and c) infected other computers connected to their victim's computer using the data obtained, they entered the bank accounts of their victims without permission; e) stole money from these accounts and laundered it in bank accounts controlled by the defendants and their accomplices in the United States and abroad; f) entered ransom programs into the victims ' computers.
About Vladimir Dunaev it is known that he is a native of Yakutia, which after the collapse of the USSR is part of Russia under the name of the Republic of Sakha. In February 2020, Dunaev flew from Yakutsk to South Korea, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions imposed, he could not fly home and stayed in the Country of Morning Dew, as the Republic of Korea is called, for more than a year, living in Seoul in a rented studio apartment. His Russian passport expired, and he issued a new one through the Russian Embassy in Seoul, but he did not have time to use it to return to his homeland. In May 2021, the Korean Ministry of Justice received a request from American colleagues for the extradition of Vladimir Dunaev, and he was arrested, taken into custody and placed in a pre-trial detention center. On October 15, the Seoul District Court granted the request of the American side for extradition. Dunaev was extradited on October 20, and on the same day, the South Korean Police Agency sent an arrest request to Interpol under the red flag of urgency and danger for "two foreigners who played a leading role in cyber attacks and large-scale extortion from US and South Korean companies." The names of those to be arrested were not given, but it was specified that one of them was a citizen of Ukraine and that in June 2021 he was detained there. Interestingly, the police report did not mention the arrest of Russian citizen Dunaev in Seoul on May 25 and his extradition to the United States.
Alla Witte is listed in the arrest warrant as a Russian citizen, but has lived in Latvia for a long time. Her maiden name is Klimova, she was born in 1965 in Rostov-on-Don and in 1983 moved to Riga, where she entered the University of Latvia and studied applied mathematics for several years. Her interest in programming started right away, but it didn't materialize: Alla Klimova taught mathematics, worked as a sales manager, got married, took the name of her Dutch husband, Adrian Witte, and moved with him to Amsterdam. The Witte couple traveled extensively, and in recent years settled in Suriname and lived in Paramaribo, the capital of this former Dutch colony in South America. In her CV, Alla Witte wrote that she graduated from the University of Latvia in 1988 with a Bachelor's degree in applied Mathematics and that she was one of the first specialists in the Latvian IT industry. Witte advertised her developer services to freelance communities. Since 2012, customers have noted the high quality and professionalism of her work. Presumably, it was on the site of freelancers that Alla Witte was found by members of a transnational cybercrime organization
According to the investigation, Dunaev's involvement in the Trickbot Group began on May 27, 2016, when he was contacted by email from the address department.ishteryakov@grnail. com and were given a task to check whether it is suitable for working in a group. Two days later, he completed the task of writing an application for the server, after which on May 30 he was given a second task to change the Firefox browser, the fourth most popular in the world. On June 1, Dunaev managed to do it again, and the next day he was made a full, extraordinary and plenipotentiary member of the group of cyber scammers. The indictment stated that the identified victims of the "Trickbot Group" in the United States were 9 banks, 2 school districts and 36 companies in the states of Florida, Vermont, Virginia, Texas, California, New York and Minnesota, and around the world, except for the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, and Germany were affected., India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Suriname and Russia. According to the investigation, cybercriminals operated from the territories of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Suriname, where Alla Witte lived. As the prosecutor's office estimated, in five years the Trickbot Group stole "from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars", which sounds impressive, but is not very suitable for prosecution – in criminal cases, money likes to count.
