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As a result of the recent exchange of prisoners, three criminals returned to Russia from our prisons: Roman Seleznev, Vladislav Klyushin and Vadim Konoshchenok, who, however, is too early to be called a criminal, since he did not wait for the trial.
As Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, reported a week ago, that is, after the exchange, 62 Russians remain in American prisons, who, according to him, "were abducted in third countries and taken to the United States."
As Antonov put it, there they are "persuaded to admit their guilt, to cooperate with the FBI", offering to reduce the prison term in exchange for a deal, but he does not condemn Russians who chose to cooperate with the American special services, since "it is one thing to use harsh epithets and slogans against these people, another thing is to live at least one day in this prison and see these conditions." So it is or not, but on August 9 it became known that the list of Antonov can be increased, as the day before from the island of Cyprus to New York delivered 33-year-old Artur Petrov, a citizen of Russia and Germany, arrested there on August 26 last year on a warrant from a Manhattan court. He was arrested while passing through passport control at Larnaca Airport, where he arrived on a flight from Germany. In January 2024, the District Court in Larnaca refused to extradite the American side, considering that the request for Petrov's removal from the Republic of Cyprus did not have sufficient grounds. Petrov's lawyer filed an appeal, which was denied in April of this year. On July 18, the court approved the extradition, after which the Minister of Justice and Public Order Marios Harziotis issued a warrant.
On August 8, Petrov arrived in New York and the next day, federal magistrate Judge Jennifer Willis in Manhattan introduced him to the charges and took him into custody, after which he was taken to Brooklyn federal prison MDC, where he was registered as a" white male of 34 years " under the number 00021-506. Petrov is accused of smuggling, violating export controls and money laundering, for which technically, that is, adding up each term, threatens 160 years in prison, but in practice we will talk about 20 years, or even less, if, of course, Petrov, according to Ambassador Antonov, "will cooperate with the American special services". In a press release, the Federal Prosecutor's Office for the Southern District of New York noted the prosecutor himself, two deputy Ministers of Justice, the acting head of the New York office of the FBI and the Deputy Minister of Commerce for Export Control. "Artur Petrov," said Prosecutor Damian Williams, "is charged with conspiring to smuggle military microelectronics from American distributors to Russia as part of an illegal Russian procurement network that supplies manufacturers for the Russian military. He allegedly concealed the final destination of these classified materials, knowing that these transactions and shipments violated U.S. export controls to Russia. Thanks to the efforts of our law enforcement partners here and abroad, Petrov is now in U.S. custody and will appear in a U.S. court."
In the words of the late Boris Pasternak, what kind of mischief did Artur Petrov supposedly do that he faces such punishment? In the most general terms, the prosecution claims that from February 2022 to August 2023, he and two accomplices purchased a large amount of electronics from American firms for the Russian LLC (Limited Liability Company, or in our opinion LTD) "Elektrokom VPK", which, as indicated on the company's website, supplies products to the military-industrial complex. businesses. To hide the fact that the supplies were intended for Russia, the smugglers used shell companies, also known as" dummy companies", registered in third countries. Petrov's accomplices are referred to as “CC-1” and “CC-2”in the case file. "Petrov, who lives in Russia and Cyprus," the press release says, "worked for Elektrokom, as well as his accomplices, who are also Russian citizens," and the technologies they acquired in violation of export controls in the course of the conspiracy have important military applications and include various types of electronic components like those that were found on the battlefield in Ukraine in such Russian military equipment as guided missiles, drones, as well as electronic warfare and communications equipment."
For the success of his enterprise, the prosecution alleges, Petrov first bought controlled microelectronics from American exporters through his Cyprus dummy company Astrafteros Technokosmos. At the same time, he lied to American exporters that Astrafteros buys goods for fire safety systems and other purely peaceful commercial applications, and the final recipients and destinations of electronics will be companies in Cyprus or other third countries, although in fact all this good was intended for the Russian company Electrocom, which discusses the Russian military-industrial complex. This package included, among other things, microcontrollers and integrated circuits that cannot be legally exported or re-exported to Russia without a license from the Ministry of Commerce. The invoices that Petrov submitted to American distributors explicitly stated that these microcontrollers and integrated circuits fall under export control, which he and his accomplices managed to circumvent through "dummy" companies in third countries. According to the prosecution, during the specified year and a half, the defendants bought controlled electronic components for military purposes in the United States and sent them to Russia in the amount of more than $ 225,000. For 120 years of imprisonment, of course, it is not enough, but, as they say, the hut is not red with corners, but red with pies, that is, it is not the quantity that matters, but the quality of contraband.
Another report about maturing footage for the next prisoner exchange came from Florida. On August 8, mostly Russian-language media spread a message about the arrest in Florida of Russian Pavel Kublitsky and a citizen of Kazakhstan Alexander Khodyrev, whose age is not specified, as well as many other things. It is known that Kublitsky is originally from Omsk, where in 2011 he headed the city branch of the pyramid of MMM, the second project of Sergey Mavrodi. It is also known that on June 2, Pavel Kublitsky was detained in Montenegro on charges of interfering in the US election. The Committee for the Protection of Human Rights became aware of his arrest through media reports, after which the committee sent a letter to the Commissioner for Human Rights in Montenegro to receive additional official information. It is known that a warrant for Kublitsky's arrest in the United States was issued on July 22, 2024 in the federal court of the Middle District of Florida, and also that on August 9, a message appeared on the Telegram channel of the Russian Embassy in Washington that it was aware of Kublitsky's detention and that "he is currently being held in a Miami prison. We sent a request to the penitentiary institution to hold a telephone conversation with a compatriot."
According to the preliminary indictment, Kublitsky and Khodyrev arrived in the United States in December 2022 and immediately applied for asylum, indicating the same address in the city of Hollywood between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. They were listed as unemployed, although judging by their lifestyle, they made more than decent money, and they didn't come here poor. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Kublitsky immediately opened an account with Bank of America, depositing 50 thousand dollars, and then rented a condominium in the elite area of Sunny Isles Beach-a suburb of Miami, which was called "Little Moscow", because of the influx of "new Russians" of different degrees of fame, but equally rich. And Khodyrev was not particularly chic, but in March 2023 he bought a 2023 sports Corvette for 110 thousand dollars.
Kublitsky and Khodyrev are not listed in the press releases of all three federal prosecutor's offices in Florida-the Northern, Middle, and Southern Districts – or in the Federal Bureau of Prisons database. However, warrants for their arrest were obtained by Magistrate Judge Amanda Sansone in Tampa based on a 35-page preliminary indictment compiled by FBI investigator Gregory Christopher. He said under oath that he had been working in the bureau since March 2006, and before that he had served in the Marine Corps for 6 years, where he commanded a platoon and participated in the anti-terrorist operation "Indestructible Freedom". At the FBI's Tampa office, he handles national security and criminal investigations, computer program intrusion, intellectual property rights, email and electronic fraud, and money laundering. In this case, he also has the cards in his hands, since Pavel Kublitsky and Alexander Khodyrev are accused of conspiring to illegally sell electronic devices for unauthorized access to computer networks. Depending on the amount of trafficking in such devices, the prosecution provides for imprisonment for a term of 10 to 20 years, and the first hearing of their case was held on August 9.
Specifically, they are accused of creating the WWH Club Internet forum many years ago, where you could buy or sell stolen credit card numbers, hire hackers, or order phone blocking with a stream of SMS messages or endless calls to the victim's number. Such services cost from 10 to 60 thousand rubles at the exchange rate in cryptocurrency. At the same time, WWH Club offered to learn "a new profession, a new way of earning money and a completely new way of life." For 60 thousand rubles (now $ 659), the club recorded courses on training in illegal activities: hacking, phishing, and even "survival on the list of the most wanted criminals" in the United States. Training materials cost about $200 more.
Our FBI became interested in the Russian WWH Club forum 4 years ago, and in July 2020 it got access to the internal system of the site. All the ads and user messages were in Russian, and the bureau's agents had to resort to the help of specialized software-Google translator. In January 2023, an undercover agent was introduced into the forum, whose testimony became the main evidence of the prosecutor's office.
The forum had strict rules of conduct. All user posts were opened to the administration and moderators. For any violation, "penalty points" were issued. When a certain threshold of these points is reached, the user is permanently blocked. In the code of rules, there was one particularly important thing for administrators: participants were forbidden to use the forum for crimes against individuals and organizations located or representing the interests of the CIS countries-Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine, which left the CIS 10 years ago, but WWH Club considers it a member of the commonwealth in the old-fashioned way. As of July 2020, about 170 thousand people were registered in WWH Club, and in March 2023, the forum administration reported that there were 350 thousand of them.
As Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, reported a week ago, that is, after the exchange, 62 Russians remain in American prisons, who, according to him, "were abducted in third countries and taken to the United States."
As Antonov put it, there they are "persuaded to admit their guilt, to cooperate with the FBI", offering to reduce the prison term in exchange for a deal, but he does not condemn Russians who chose to cooperate with the American special services, since "it is one thing to use harsh epithets and slogans against these people, another thing is to live at least one day in this prison and see these conditions." So it is or not, but on August 9 it became known that the list of Antonov can be increased, as the day before from the island of Cyprus to New York delivered 33-year-old Artur Petrov, a citizen of Russia and Germany, arrested there on August 26 last year on a warrant from a Manhattan court. He was arrested while passing through passport control at Larnaca Airport, where he arrived on a flight from Germany. In January 2024, the District Court in Larnaca refused to extradite the American side, considering that the request for Petrov's removal from the Republic of Cyprus did not have sufficient grounds. Petrov's lawyer filed an appeal, which was denied in April of this year. On July 18, the court approved the extradition, after which the Minister of Justice and Public Order Marios Harziotis issued a warrant.
On August 8, Petrov arrived in New York and the next day, federal magistrate Judge Jennifer Willis in Manhattan introduced him to the charges and took him into custody, after which he was taken to Brooklyn federal prison MDC, where he was registered as a" white male of 34 years " under the number 00021-506. Petrov is accused of smuggling, violating export controls and money laundering, for which technically, that is, adding up each term, threatens 160 years in prison, but in practice we will talk about 20 years, or even less, if, of course, Petrov, according to Ambassador Antonov, "will cooperate with the American special services". In a press release, the Federal Prosecutor's Office for the Southern District of New York noted the prosecutor himself, two deputy Ministers of Justice, the acting head of the New York office of the FBI and the Deputy Minister of Commerce for Export Control. "Artur Petrov," said Prosecutor Damian Williams, "is charged with conspiring to smuggle military microelectronics from American distributors to Russia as part of an illegal Russian procurement network that supplies manufacturers for the Russian military. He allegedly concealed the final destination of these classified materials, knowing that these transactions and shipments violated U.S. export controls to Russia. Thanks to the efforts of our law enforcement partners here and abroad, Petrov is now in U.S. custody and will appear in a U.S. court."
In the words of the late Boris Pasternak, what kind of mischief did Artur Petrov supposedly do that he faces such punishment? In the most general terms, the prosecution claims that from February 2022 to August 2023, he and two accomplices purchased a large amount of electronics from American firms for the Russian LLC (Limited Liability Company, or in our opinion LTD) "Elektrokom VPK", which, as indicated on the company's website, supplies products to the military-industrial complex. businesses. To hide the fact that the supplies were intended for Russia, the smugglers used shell companies, also known as" dummy companies", registered in third countries. Petrov's accomplices are referred to as “CC-1” and “CC-2”in the case file. "Petrov, who lives in Russia and Cyprus," the press release says, "worked for Elektrokom, as well as his accomplices, who are also Russian citizens," and the technologies they acquired in violation of export controls in the course of the conspiracy have important military applications and include various types of electronic components like those that were found on the battlefield in Ukraine in such Russian military equipment as guided missiles, drones, as well as electronic warfare and communications equipment."
For the success of his enterprise, the prosecution alleges, Petrov first bought controlled microelectronics from American exporters through his Cyprus dummy company Astrafteros Technokosmos. At the same time, he lied to American exporters that Astrafteros buys goods for fire safety systems and other purely peaceful commercial applications, and the final recipients and destinations of electronics will be companies in Cyprus or other third countries, although in fact all this good was intended for the Russian company Electrocom, which discusses the Russian military-industrial complex. This package included, among other things, microcontrollers and integrated circuits that cannot be legally exported or re-exported to Russia without a license from the Ministry of Commerce. The invoices that Petrov submitted to American distributors explicitly stated that these microcontrollers and integrated circuits fall under export control, which he and his accomplices managed to circumvent through "dummy" companies in third countries. According to the prosecution, during the specified year and a half, the defendants bought controlled electronic components for military purposes in the United States and sent them to Russia in the amount of more than $ 225,000. For 120 years of imprisonment, of course, it is not enough, but, as they say, the hut is not red with corners, but red with pies, that is, it is not the quantity that matters, but the quality of contraband.
Another report about maturing footage for the next prisoner exchange came from Florida. On August 8, mostly Russian-language media spread a message about the arrest in Florida of Russian Pavel Kublitsky and a citizen of Kazakhstan Alexander Khodyrev, whose age is not specified, as well as many other things. It is known that Kublitsky is originally from Omsk, where in 2011 he headed the city branch of the pyramid of MMM, the second project of Sergey Mavrodi. It is also known that on June 2, Pavel Kublitsky was detained in Montenegro on charges of interfering in the US election. The Committee for the Protection of Human Rights became aware of his arrest through media reports, after which the committee sent a letter to the Commissioner for Human Rights in Montenegro to receive additional official information. It is known that a warrant for Kublitsky's arrest in the United States was issued on July 22, 2024 in the federal court of the Middle District of Florida, and also that on August 9, a message appeared on the Telegram channel of the Russian Embassy in Washington that it was aware of Kublitsky's detention and that "he is currently being held in a Miami prison. We sent a request to the penitentiary institution to hold a telephone conversation with a compatriot."
According to the preliminary indictment, Kublitsky and Khodyrev arrived in the United States in December 2022 and immediately applied for asylum, indicating the same address in the city of Hollywood between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. They were listed as unemployed, although judging by their lifestyle, they made more than decent money, and they didn't come here poor. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Kublitsky immediately opened an account with Bank of America, depositing 50 thousand dollars, and then rented a condominium in the elite area of Sunny Isles Beach-a suburb of Miami, which was called "Little Moscow", because of the influx of "new Russians" of different degrees of fame, but equally rich. And Khodyrev was not particularly chic, but in March 2023 he bought a 2023 sports Corvette for 110 thousand dollars.
Kublitsky and Khodyrev are not listed in the press releases of all three federal prosecutor's offices in Florida-the Northern, Middle, and Southern Districts – or in the Federal Bureau of Prisons database. However, warrants for their arrest were obtained by Magistrate Judge Amanda Sansone in Tampa based on a 35-page preliminary indictment compiled by FBI investigator Gregory Christopher. He said under oath that he had been working in the bureau since March 2006, and before that he had served in the Marine Corps for 6 years, where he commanded a platoon and participated in the anti-terrorist operation "Indestructible Freedom". At the FBI's Tampa office, he handles national security and criminal investigations, computer program intrusion, intellectual property rights, email and electronic fraud, and money laundering. In this case, he also has the cards in his hands, since Pavel Kublitsky and Alexander Khodyrev are accused of conspiring to illegally sell electronic devices for unauthorized access to computer networks. Depending on the amount of trafficking in such devices, the prosecution provides for imprisonment for a term of 10 to 20 years, and the first hearing of their case was held on August 9.
Specifically, they are accused of creating the WWH Club Internet forum many years ago, where you could buy or sell stolen credit card numbers, hire hackers, or order phone blocking with a stream of SMS messages or endless calls to the victim's number. Such services cost from 10 to 60 thousand rubles at the exchange rate in cryptocurrency. At the same time, WWH Club offered to learn "a new profession, a new way of earning money and a completely new way of life." For 60 thousand rubles (now $ 659), the club recorded courses on training in illegal activities: hacking, phishing, and even "survival on the list of the most wanted criminals" in the United States. Training materials cost about $200 more.
Our FBI became interested in the Russian WWH Club forum 4 years ago, and in July 2020 it got access to the internal system of the site. All the ads and user messages were in Russian, and the bureau's agents had to resort to the help of specialized software-Google translator. In January 2023, an undercover agent was introduced into the forum, whose testimony became the main evidence of the prosecutor's office.
The forum had strict rules of conduct. All user posts were opened to the administration and moderators. For any violation, "penalty points" were issued. When a certain threshold of these points is reached, the user is permanently blocked. In the code of rules, there was one particularly important thing for administrators: participants were forbidden to use the forum for crimes against individuals and organizations located or representing the interests of the CIS countries-Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine, which left the CIS 10 years ago, but WWH Club considers it a member of the commonwealth in the old-fashioned way. As of July 2020, about 170 thousand people were registered in WWH Club, and in March 2023, the forum administration reported that there were 350 thousand of them.
