Vladimir Zdorovenin, an alleged prolific Russian cybercriminal, has arrived in New York City following his arrest and subsequent extradition by Swiss authorities. The FBI had been working to find and extradite Zdorovenin for several years.
Originally indicted under seal in May 2007, the 54-year-old Moscow man could face as much as 142 years in an American federal prison.
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, officially unsealed the nine-count indictment yesterday, charging Vladimir Zdorovenin and his son, Kirill Zdorovenin, who remains at large, with conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud, aggravated identity theft, and securities fraud.
“Vladimir Zdorovenin and his son… engaged in serial cyber crimes in Russia that targeted Americans and wrought havoc with their personal and financial information, using it to make phony purchases and to manipulate stock prices.” Bharara said. “As the unsealing of today’s Indictment demonstrates, we will reach out across the globe, and wait as long as it takes to bring cyber criminals to justice.”
According to FBI Assistant Director in Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk, Zdorovenin and his son created a number of companies which they used as fronts to defraud consumers of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition to the use of compromised credit card information, the two Zdorovenins stand accused of using malware to gain access to their victims’ brokerage accounts in order to trade securities and manipulate the prices of stocks that the Zdorovenin’s already owned.
The indictment states that the alleged crimes took place between 2004 and 2005. It goes on to say that the accused purchased the compromised credit cards through underground carder services and used them to create the illusion that individuals were making legitimate purchases from the various Internet businesses-fronts they ran. These fraudulent transactions served the larger purpose of deceiving banks, credit card processors and holders, thus allowing them to allegedly steal the money they directed to their websites.
