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10 years of evasion from the law ended with a relatively lenient term.
The US Department of Justice has sentenced Vyacheslav Penchukov to prison and ordered him to pay $73 million in damages for participating in two major malware distribution schemes. The court's decision is reported by Wired.
Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov ("Tank"), formerly a well-known DJ, was on the FBI's most wanted list for more than 10 years. Already in 2010, when the FBI raided his apartment, Penchukov disappeared. Penchukov's criminal activities ended at the end of 2022, when he was arrested in Switzerland and extradited to the United States.
Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov, 37, pleaded guilty in February to charges related to the management of the Zeus banking virus in the 2010s as part of the JabberZeus group and the IcedID (Bokbot) program. The court sentenced Penchukov to two simultaneous 9-year prison terms and 3 years of conditional release under supervision, and also ordered him to pay $73 million in damages.
Both charges could have carried up to 20 years in prison each, but thanks to the plea deal, the sentence was reduced. The terms of the deal remain unclear.
Penchukov admitted that since 2009 he was one of the leaders of the JabberZeus group. The group used the Zeus malware to infect computers and steal bank data. Cybercriminals logged into accounts and sent money to frontmen, who then cashed out the funds, which led to the theft of tens of millions of dollars from small businesses in the United States and Europe.
Penchukov also admitted to playing a key role in organizing the distribution of IcedID malware (Bokbot), which collected victims ' financial data and allowed ransomware to be deployed on systems. Penchukov participated in the distribution of IcedID from November 2018 to February 2021. Investigators found that he kept a spreadsheet that listed IcedID's revenue of $19.9 million for 2021.
Since the beginning of 2009, the JabberZeus group has added Jabber instant messaging to its system, which allowed operators to immediately respond to compromise and start fraudulent actions automatically. Later, the group developed the Gameover Zeus botnet and went on to create some of the most destructive ransomware of the last decade.
In 2010, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies identified Penchukov and other members of the group by analyzing their Jabber messages captured from a server in the United States. In one of the messages, Tank talked about his daughter, which made it possible to determine his identity.
In November 2022, Penchukov was arrested in Geneva, Switzerland, while traveling to meet his wife. Since the Zeus Group reached its peak, their bank fraud model has declined in importance. The main tactics of cybercriminals were the use of ransomware and extortion of data using cryptocurrencies for money laundering, which brought them more than $1.1 billion in 2023.
Source
The US Department of Justice has sentenced Vyacheslav Penchukov to prison and ordered him to pay $73 million in damages for participating in two major malware distribution schemes. The court's decision is reported by Wired.
Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov ("Tank"), formerly a well-known DJ, was on the FBI's most wanted list for more than 10 years. Already in 2010, when the FBI raided his apartment, Penchukov disappeared. Penchukov's criminal activities ended at the end of 2022, when he was arrested in Switzerland and extradited to the United States.
Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov, 37, pleaded guilty in February to charges related to the management of the Zeus banking virus in the 2010s as part of the JabberZeus group and the IcedID (Bokbot) program. The court sentenced Penchukov to two simultaneous 9-year prison terms and 3 years of conditional release under supervision, and also ordered him to pay $73 million in damages.
Both charges could have carried up to 20 years in prison each, but thanks to the plea deal, the sentence was reduced. The terms of the deal remain unclear.
Penchukov admitted that since 2009 he was one of the leaders of the JabberZeus group. The group used the Zeus malware to infect computers and steal bank data. Cybercriminals logged into accounts and sent money to frontmen, who then cashed out the funds, which led to the theft of tens of millions of dollars from small businesses in the United States and Europe.
Penchukov also admitted to playing a key role in organizing the distribution of IcedID malware (Bokbot), which collected victims ' financial data and allowed ransomware to be deployed on systems. Penchukov participated in the distribution of IcedID from November 2018 to February 2021. Investigators found that he kept a spreadsheet that listed IcedID's revenue of $19.9 million for 2021.
Since the beginning of 2009, the JabberZeus group has added Jabber instant messaging to its system, which allowed operators to immediately respond to compromise and start fraudulent actions automatically. Later, the group developed the Gameover Zeus botnet and went on to create some of the most destructive ransomware of the last decade.
In 2010, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies identified Penchukov and other members of the group by analyzing their Jabber messages captured from a server in the United States. In one of the messages, Tank talked about his daughter, which made it possible to determine his identity.
In November 2022, Penchukov was arrested in Geneva, Switzerland, while traveling to meet his wife. Since the Zeus Group reached its peak, their bank fraud model has declined in importance. The main tactics of cybercriminals were the use of ransomware and extortion of data using cryptocurrencies for money laundering, which brought them more than $1.1 billion in 2023.
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