Russian Hacker Sentenced to 27 Years

Occasionally, the good guys win.

Russian hacker Roman Seleznev, son of a Russian Parliament member was sentenced to 27 years in jail after being convicted on 38 counts.

The idiot made the mistake of vacationing in the Maldives, either thinking the FBI didn’t know who he was, wasn’t watching him or thinking he was special and above the law (which he may well have been in Russia). Perhaps he didn’t understand the concept of extradition.  In any case he was picked up, charged in Guam and then flown to Seattle to stand trial.

Although he was on vacation, the laptop he had with him had 1.7 million stolen credit cards on it.  While it doesn’t say, I am thinking those credit card numbers were not encrypted or hidden.

He was tried in Seattle because some of his victims were there, including The Broadway Grill, which closed in 2013, citing the credit card hack as one of the reasons.

Roman’s father, the Russian legislator, accused the U.S. of kidnapping his son.  In Russia, stealing millions of credit cards and causing $170 million in losses to businesses is considered normal, so arresting and convicting his son for that is out of line.

This sentence is the longest ever handed down to a hacker in the United States.

Information for this post came from ARS Technica.

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