14 DAY TRIAL // Viktor Pleshchuk, one of the masterminds behind the $9 million RBS WorldPay cyberheist, received a six-year suspended prison sentence in Russia after agreeing to help authorities with information.
The RBS WorldPay hit is viewed by many as the most sophisticated and well organized cyberfraud operation ever conducted.
In 2008 a group of hackers penetrated the network defenses of the US-based financial institution and artificially inflated the limits of 44 re-loadable payroll cards.
Then during the course of only twelve hours cloned copies of the compromised cards were used to withdraw an estimated $9 million from more than 2,100 ATMs located in 280 different cities around the world.
The fraudulent withdrawals were performed by money mules, who kept between 30 and 50 percent of the funds for themselves.
The rest of the money were sent to Sergei Tsurikov, 25, of Tallinn, Estonia, Viktor Pleshchuk, 29, of St. Petersburg, Russia, Oleg Covelin, 28, of Chisinau, Moldova and a fourth unidentified hacker, who authorities claim instrumented the whole operation.
Sergei Tsurikov was captured in Estonia last year and was recently extradited to the United States to face the charges pending against him.
Viktor Pleshchuk was arrested in March by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), but since the Russian constitution bans extradition, he was charged in his home country.
Wired reports that Pleshchuk was sentenced yesterday to six years of suspended prison time, followed by four years of probation. He was ordered to pay around $8.9 million to RBS WorldPay in restitution.
The reduced sentence was the result of his cooperation with Russian authorities, to whom he provided information about his accomplices.
Oleg Covelin and the fourth hacker remain at large. Covelin was also indicted in a separate case for his activity as a member of a cybercriminal gang known as "Western Express Cybercrime Group," which engaged in larceny, identity theft, money laundering and wire fraud.