Ukraine authorities said on Tuesday that the 20 suspects, including 5 key targets they detained as part of a global crackdown on crime rings using the Zeus malware to steal from online bank accounts, brought a total of $40m into the country.
At a press conference covered by the FT’s Mark Rachkevych, officials from the Ukraine’s SBU confirmed that the alleged kingpins had been released, but said the five could expect to be charged this week.
Potentially among them are money laundering, interfering with computer transmissions, and distributing malicious programs. Prison terms for conviction on the second or third of those start at two years, while money laundering can fetch as many as 15.
In the meantime, the group from the industrial city of Donetsk is under surveillance and border guards have their pictures.
What happens in the days and months ahead will speak volumes about the potential for cooperation in major cybercrime cases, which almost always crosses borders. Merely seizing some of the proceeds pictured here and detaining the five, said by others to have been the major sources of income for the Russian author of the sophisticated password-stealer, is a good thing.
But not so many years ago, Ukraine also jailed one Dmitry Golubov, charged in the US and accused of having created CarderPlanet, the pioneering underground fraud website. Mr Golubov was released after elected officials vouched for him.
Likewise, the recent arrest in Russia of accused RBS WorldPay heist mastermind Viktor Pleshchuk created great excitement in the West–until last month, when he was convicted and received only a suspended sentence. It’s highly likely the Russian FSB knows who the Zeus author is, but they have yet to make an arrest.
The FBI embedded an agent with the SBU for a year to press the case against that author’s top customers, and it’s wonderful that they got as far as they did. To really open a new era of cooperation, though, the Ukrainians have to follow through–and so do the Russians.
