Four members of the now-defunct REvil ransomware operation have been sentenced to several years in prison in Russia, marking one of the rare cases in which cybercriminals from the country have been convicted of hacking and money laundering.
Russian information publication “Kommersant”. informed that the court in St. Petersburg found Artyom Zayts, Aleksey Malazemov, Daniil Puzyreuski and Ruslan Khansvyerov guilty of illegal circulation of payment means. Puzyrewski and Khansvyerov were also found guilty of using and distributing malicious programs.
For this, Zayets and Malazemov were sentenced to 4.5 and 5 years of imprisonment. Khansvyerov and Puzyrevskii received 5.5 and 6 years of imprisonment, respectively.
The four men are part of a group of 14 people who were initially detained in connection with the case. As TASS reported back in January 2022, there were eight of them is charged court for their malicious activities.
The remaining four — Andrei Beassonov, Mikhail Golovachuk, Roman Muromsky and Dmitriy Karataev — are being investigated in a new criminal case for illegal access to computer information, Kommersant added.
REvil, once one of the most prolific ransomware groups, was disassembled after Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the arrest of several members in an unprecedented crackdown.
Earlier this year, there was a 24-year-old citizen of Ukraine, Yaroslav Vasinsky awarded up to 13 years in prison in the US and ordered to pay $16 million in restitution for conducting more than 2,500 REvil ransomware attacks and demanding more than $700 million in ransoms.
The sentencing of REvil members in Russia also took place a month after the authorities in the country started an investigation at Cryptex and UAPS, both of which have been sanctioned by the US for offering money laundering services to cybercriminals.
