Financial Cyber Criminal from Russia Jailed for 9 years
A 29-year-old Russian-born, Los Angeles resident has been sentenced to over nine years in prison for running botnets of half a million computers and stealing and trafficking tens of thousands of credit card numbers on exclusive Russian-speaking cybercriminal forums.
Alexander Tverdokhlebov was arrested in February, pleaded guilty on March 31 to wire fraud and on Monday, a federal court sentenced him to 110 months in prison.
The hacker also operated several botnets — a network of compromised ordinary home and office computers that are controlled by hackers and can be used to steal credit card and other sensitive financial information.
At various occasions between 2009 and 2013, Tverdokhlebov claimed on the underground forums that “he possessed 40,000 stolen credit card numbers and could control up to 500,000 infected computers.”
