14 DAY TRIAL // Last month, a Dutch court ruled that Russian national Vladimir Drinkman, a man believed to be involved with a major cybercrime ring, could be extradited to either Russia or the United States. However, the man has filed an appeal to avoid extradition to the US.
Drinkman, 33, is one of the five individuals charged by US authorities back in July 2013 for their alleged involvement in a major cybercrime operation targeting a large number of high-profile companies.
The group is said to have stolen a total of 160 million payment cards after hacking into the systems of organizations like Carrefour, Nasdaq, 7-Eleven, JCP, Hannaford, Heartland, Wet Seal, Commidea, Dexia, JetBlue, Ingenicard, Dow Jones, Euronet, Visa Jordan, Global Payment and Diners Singapore.
Just three of these organizations reported losses of more than $300 million (€217 million) due to the cybercriminals’ actions.
Drinkman and three other Russians – Roman Kotov, 33, Dmitriy Smilianets, 30, and Alexandr Kalinin, 27 – were named in the indictment. The fifth suspect is a 27-year-old Ukrainian named Mikhail Rytikov.
Drinkman and Lalinin are believed to be responsible for breaching the targeted organizations’ networks and accessing their corporate systems. The two were first named in an indictment back in 2009, in New Jersey. However, at the time, their identities were unknown to prosecutors, so they were named “Hacker 1” and “Hacker 2.”
Dutch authorities arrested Drinkman in June 2012 along with Dmitriy Smilianets, who has already been extradited to the US and has reportedly made an agreement with prosecutors.
In April 2014, a Dutch court ruled that the extradition requests from both Russia and the United States were admissible and left it up to the Ministry of Justice to decide to which county Drinkman would be extradited.
It’s uncertain what Russia wants with the man. The country filed a request for extradition over a year after US authorities did. However, it’s clear that Drinkman doesn’t want to end up in the United States.
Bloomberg reports that the man is appealing the decision that the US’s extradition request is admissible. The appeal has been filed with the Supreme Court of the Netherlands.
It remains to be seen if Drinkman really has a shot at avoiding extradition to the US or if he’s just trying to buy some time.
Kalinin, the other suspect believed to be responsible with hacking corporate networks on behalf of the cybercriminal group, is still at large.