Obtainable over the Tor community, Hydra was a bazaar that brokered not simply medicine but in addition faux paperwork, cryptocurrency laundering providers, and different illicit items and providers. 9 months after Hydra was taken down, authorities got here for Bitzlato, a cryptocurrency change that laundered “a considerable portion of the cryptocurrency that Hydra obtained.” In all, authorities mentioned, Bitzlato processed roughly $4.58 billion price of cryptocurrency transactions. Anatoly Legkodymov, a then 40-year-old Russian nationwide residing in China, was arrested by US authorities within the 2023 takedown.
The opposite defendants sentenced alongside Moiseyev have been recognized as Alexander Chirkov, Andrei Trunov, Evgeny Andreyev, Ivan Koryakin, Vadim Krasninsky, Georgy Georgobiani, Artur Kolesnikov, Nikolay Bilyk, Alexander Khramov, Kirill Gusev, Anton Gaikin, Alexey Gukalin, Mikhail Dombrovsky, Alexander Aminov, and Sergey Chekh.
The sentencing follows the reported arrest on Friday by Russian authorities of Mikhail Matveyev, in keeping with RIA Novosti. Matveyev has been linked to ransomware teams together with Babuk, Conti, DarkSide, Hive, and LockBit. US authorities say he’s wished for ransomware assaults on 1000’s of entities worldwide, together with hospitals, airways, and authorities organizations. He faces fees for the creation or distribution of software program supposed to hack data programs.
In Might 2023, the US Treasury Division introduced sanctions in opposition to Matveyev. On the similar time, the US Division of State supplied a bounty of as much as $10 million for data resulting in his arrest.
The stiff sentence of Moiseyev and the arrest of Matveyev are one thing of a rarity in Russia, which has lengthy appeared the opposite method when studying of Russian nationals pursuing cybercrime, so long as folks contained in the nation and allied nations aren’t focused.
