A Quartet of REvil Ransomware Participants Sentenced in Uncommon Russian Cybercrime Judgments
A group of four individuals from the now-defunct REvil ransomware syndicate have been handed down sentences for multiple years in confinement in Russia, in a somewhat unique scenario where cyber offenders from the nation have been adjudged guilty of breaching and unlawful finance operations.
A St. Petersburg court, as per reports by the Russian news outlet Kommersant, convicted Artem Zaets, Alexei Malozemov, Daniil Puzyrevsky, and Ruslan Khansvyarov for their involvement in the illicit payment system. Furthermore, Puzyrevsky and Khansvyarov were also proven guilty of utilizing and distributing malicious software.
In this regard, Zaets and Malozemov were given prison terms of 4.5 and 5 years respectively. Khansvyarov and Puzyrevsky, on the other hand, were sentenced to 5.5 and 6 years in jail, in that order.
Originally, a total of 14 individuals were apprehended in connection with this case. In January 2022, TASS reported that eight of them faced charges from the court for their malevolent deeds.
The remaining four accused, Andrei Bessonov, Mikhail Golovachuk, Roman Muromsky, and Dmitry Korotaev, are facing prosecution in a new legal case linked to unauthorized entry into computer systems, as reported by Kommersant.
REvil, formerly one of the most active ransomware associations, was dismantled following arrests made by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) against a number of its members in an extraordinary operation.
Earlier in the year, a 24-year-old Ukrainian national named Yaroslav Vasinskyi was sentenced to a 13-year prison term in the U.S. and instructed to pay $16 million in restitution for executing over 2,500 REvil ransomware attacks and demanding ransom sums exceeding $700 million.
The sentencing of REvil syndicate members in Russia follows an investigation by local authorities into Cryptex and UAPS, both of which were blacklisted by the U.S. for facilitating money laundering services for cyber perpetrators.
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