Maldivian captive

In the United States, the press is still discussing the scandal surrounding the Russian hacker Roman Seleznev, who was sentenced by an American court to an unprecedented 27 years in prison. The New Times studied the vicissitudes of this case through court documents

Why Seleznev was given such a long sentence was partly answered in a statement in the District Court of Seattle (Washington, USA) by a representative of the prosecution: “Never before has a criminal of this magnitude been involved in computer fraud has been caught and convicted in an American court.” The prosecutor called the defendant "a mobster like Tony Soprano" and demanded a sentence of 30 years in prison "because Seleznev's operations were unprecedented," The Seattle Time reported.

“Roman Seleznev has been involved in cybercrime all his adult life,” the federal prosecutor’s office wrote in mid-April to Judge Richard Jones, who presided over the Russian’s trial in August 2016 and was supposed to sentence him at the Seattle trial.

American investigators have been hunting for Seleznev for almost 10 years. According to prosecutors, at the age of 18, Seleznev began using the nickname nCuX (“crazy”) online, under which he joined a close-knit family of Russian carders in 2000, that is, hackers involved in fraudulent operations with credit cards.

Cyber ​​underground under the nickname Psych

Seleznev's activities on this path went through several stages. At its earliest, Psycho traded in stolen personal data - names, dates of birth and social security numbers, or "fulls", as they are called in the cyber underground.

The US Secret Service began tracking Psych around 2005. Studying the underground forums, she found out that since 2002 this person has been actively participating in such carding forums as Carder.org, Vendors Name CarderPlanet.

In 2007, Psych began retailing stolen credit card details, and over the next couple of years he regularly advertised large quantities of the item on forums that offered "dumps," i.e. illegally obtained credit card details. During this period, Psych gained a reputation in carding circles as a reliable supplier of dumps. The US Secret Service also appreciated its success and moved Psycho to the forefront of the objects it is developing.

Psycho, according to prosecutors, stole his "dumps" by invading credit card processing systems installed at small business facilities in various countries, but mainly in the United States. The invasion was carried out through open ports of computers, into which cyberthieves launched malicious programs that stole credit card details at the time of payment for the purchase. The data thus obtained was then sent to Psych's servers in Russia, Ukraine, and McLean, Virginia.

By 2009, Psych became one of the top suppliers of dumps in the world. As American prosecutors write, "he was idolized in the Carder underground, he was admired by thousands of other criminals."

Investigators eventually figured out that under the nickname Psych hides a resident of Vladivostok Roman Seleznev, the son of a State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party Valery Seleznev, who broke up with his mother Irina Goroshenko when the boy was 2 years old. On May 19, 2009, investigators from the Secret Service and the FBI met in Moscow with colleagues from the FSB and laid out the accumulated evidence of Seleznev Jr.'s crimes before them. They introduced Seleznev's nicknames to the Russian partners and stated that, according to their information, it was he who was hiding under the name Psycho.

However, according to the prosecutor's office for the Western District of Washington, "an attempt by investigators to establish international coordination went sideways to them." A month later, on June 21, 2009, Psycho notified his associates on numerous crime forums that he was going out of business. Soon his nickname disappeared from the network.

On May 19, 2009, investigators from the Secret Service and the FBI met in Moscow with colleagues from the FSB and laid out the accumulated evidence of Seleznev Jr.'s crimes before them. They introduced Seleznev's nicknames to the Russian partners and stated that, according to their information, it was he who was hiding under the name Psycho.

Reference Carding

The Americans came to the conclusion that Seleznev had clearly received information that US law enforcement agencies were interested in him. From the conversations he had in a chat with one of his accomplices, it followed that Seleznev had contacts in the FSB cybercrime unit and that he enjoyed their patronage.

However, having buried the nickname Psycho, Seleznev did not give up carding and even expanded the scope of his operations, but under the new nickname Track2. In September 2009, he took them to the next level by launching automated trading sites Track2 and Bulba. Prosecutors say they acted like Amazon.com, allowing card shoppers to automatically search, select, and purchase credit cards from a particular bank or brand. By the way, this innovation is still the standard in the world of carding.

Seleznev's sites immediately became wildly popular and, apparently, were the main source of stolen credit card details all the time. In 2010, the Track2 website was the exclusive supplier of dumps for Carder.su, one of the largest carding forums in the world with about 25,000 members.

Seleznev managed the Track2 and Bulba websites until April 2011, when, during a tour in Morocco, he accidentally became the victim of a terrorist attack: a suicide bombing in Marrakech killed 18 people, Roman Seleznev was among 20 injured.

Seleznev was taken on a special flight to Moscow, where he spent several months in the hospital. As he wrote later, during the investigation in the United States to an American judge, his then wife left him, explaining that she did not want to mess with the “vegetable”.

While Seleznev was being treated, accomplices continued to manage his sites. However, in January 2012, the sites were still closed by them - allegedly due to the lack of fresh dumps.

Having recovered, Seleznev did not change his calling and returned to carding under the new nickname 2Pac in honor of rapper Tupac Shakur, whose portrait he had previously used in his advertising. The new site was similar in function to the old site, but with two improvements.

First, the 2Ras site acted not only as a selling point for dumps stolen by Seleznev himself, but also as a marketplace for data stolen by other major hackers from around the world. As the site advertised, "2Pac brings you all the best-selling dumps in one place." At the same time, Seleznev provided other hackers with the opportunity to trade their dumps on his website, and they shared the proceeds with him. For example, the site sold data stolen by hackers from department stores Target, Michaels and Nieman Marcus.

"Remember that this is an illegal way"

Secondly, Seleznev started another website that aimed to increase the demand for dumps by teaching ordinary criminals how to cheat with credit cards. He called this site POS Dumps.

“This is a guide on how to buy dumps and use them in the store,” the intro reads in dubious English. - (How to make and use fake credit cards). I will explain how you can make money. From $500 to $50,000 and even $500,000. Remember that this is illegal! A process from start to finish!

Neophyte carders were taught how to stamp other people's credit card data on plastic cards, and recommended sites where they could buy the necessary equipment.

“This is a guide on how to buy dumps and use them in the store,” the intro reads in dubious English. - (How to make and use fake credit cards). I will explain how you can earn money. From $500 to $50,000 and even $500,000. Remember that this is illegal! A process from start to finish!

The site also offered software for applying data to blank maps, which was developed by Seleznev himself, who called it Jerm. The neophytes were taught how to determine the balance remaining on a given credit card and determine the postal code of its owner. POS Dumps was received with a bang: in its first month (June 2014), the site was visited by 3,369 knowledge seekers.

According to prosecutors' calculations, Seleznyov earned millions of dollars during his time in the cyber underground. Since he used anonymous payment systems such as Bitcoin, Liberty Reserve or WebMoney to obtain criminal profits, the full amount of profits he received will remain unidentified. But it is known that in 2010-2013 Seleznev received about $ 17 million through Liberty Reserve alone - it turned out to be possible to establish this amount, since the US authorities laid hands on the archives of the payment company.

On March 3, 2011, a grand jury in Seattle opened a case against Seleznev, but the case remained classified by court order. Seleznev, who, we recall, by that time had already been informed by his informants in the Russian special services that the Americans were hunting him, took precautions and evaded pursuit for more than three years. How did Seleznev play it safe? He, for example, as it turned out later, bought tickets somewhere at the very last minute, studied the list of countries that had concluded extradition treaties with the United States, and subscribed to the paid Pacer system, which gives access to a database of American federal courts. Seleznev regularly consulted this database, looking for cases brought against himself and his accomplices.

After the arrest

Agents of the US Secret Service detained Roman Seleznev in July 2014 in the Maldives. The first question he asked the Americans after his arrest was whether that country had an extradition agreement with the US. The fact is that Seleznev went on vacation to the Maldives, having made sure in advance that this country did not have such an agreement with the United States. But he did not take into account the fact that countries can extradite suspects, and even more so for major crimes, without an agreement on mutual extradition.

By the way, the preparations for the arrest of Seleznev are worth a separate mention. On July 1, 2014, the Americans learned that Seleznev was vacationing in the Maldives (where, as the prosecutor's office later found out, he spent $20,000) and was leaving on July 5. In the remaining 4 days, the Secret Service had to get “go-ahead” from the authorities to conduct an operation abroad, obtain the consent of the Maldivian authorities to extradite the object in the absence of an extradition agreement, send employees to the Maldives, which are 18 hours away from the closest US state to them - Hawaiian Islands, agree with the local authorities on the details of the operation and charter a private plane that will take Seleznev to the nearest American territory.

Seleznev went on vacation to the Maldives, making sure in advance that this country does not have an agreement on mutual extradition with the United States. But he did not take into account the fact that countries can extradite criminal suspects without such an agreement.

After his arrest, Seleznev did everything he could to make life difficult for his captors, thereby incurring an additional charge of obstruction of justice.

When he was taken to Guam, he tried to convince the federal court there to dismiss the case by making a sworn statement that he had been beaten and tortured by Secret Service agents on the way from the Maldives.

The latter testified, also under oath, that they never even raised their voice at him and allowed him to smoke on the plane and use metal cutlery instead of orphan plastic ones, and also choose a second course to taste. After listening to their testimony and examining the photographs they took on the plane, the Guam judge believed them, not Seleznev.

Trying to alleviate his plight, in December 2015 Seleznev volunteered to meet with the prosecutor and investigators, but behaved defiantly and did not give them any information about the accomplices. But he still said enough that the prosecutor's office decided to quote this conversation at his trial.

Seleznev, however, demanded that the judge forbid the prosecution to quote his testimony, stating that his lawyers did not bother to show him the Russian translation of the agreement that he signed before the conversation with the prosecutors, and poorly explained to him the meaning of this deal.

In response, the lawyers presented the judge with a Russian translation of the agreement they ordered for Seleznev, as well as evidence that their client was fully acquainted with the translation of the document. The judge again believed the lawyers, not Seleznev.

According to the prosecutors, the Russian delayed the pre-trial procedures for a total of 2 years and 2 months in various ways and, in particular, changed six lawyer teams.

"Uncle Andrew's variant"

Wiretaps of Roman Seleznev's phone conversations with his deputy father show that they were discussing ways to postpone one important hearing in order to have time to activate a mysterious strategy coded as "Uncle Andrey's option." The father advised Seleznev Jr. to show himself ill or to completely stop contact with his defense.

This tactic paid off, prosecutors write: two days before the hearing, the defense filed a motion to withdraw from the case, citing "a complete misunderstanding with the client." The court had to postpone the hearing for several months.

The delay cost prosecutors a lot of money because they had already brought witnesses from Sri Lanka, as well as from Honolulu, Chicago and Washington, to Seattle at their own expense.

And these, by the way, are not the only expenses that Seleznev has driven the American authorities into. First, he hired a large New York law firm for a lot of money, and then a small but elite local one. In February 2015, he demanded free lawyers, which the US government is required to provide to the poor.

The prosecutors cried out: they say that Seleznev illegally earned millions of dollars, and before his arrest he rented a hotel in the Maldives for $1,400 a day, but the judge granted the petition of the accused.

When free lawyers failed to satisfy Seleznev, he magically raised money to hire two more expensive firms.

First, Seleznev hired a large New York law firm for a lot of money, and then a small but elite local one. In February 2015, he demanded free lawyers, which the US government is required to provide to the poor. Prosecutors yelled that Seleznev illegally earned millions of dollars and that before his arrest he rented a hotel in the Maldives for $1,400 a day, but the judge granted the defendant's petition

So when Seleznev's last lawyer, Igor Litvak, accused the procurators of being hostile to his client, he was right in his own way: after the jury found Seleznev guilty after less than a day's deliberation in August last year, the prosecutor's office demanded that he be sentenced to 30 years.

But there was a time when the prosecutor's office, as is clear from the conversations that Seleznev had from prison with his girlfriend Anna Otisko, offered him some 17 years in exchange for pleading guilty. I had to agree.

In desperation, Seleznev met again at the end of March 2017 with the prosecutors, but could no longer give them valuable information, since in the fleeting universe of carding it quickly becomes outdated. True, he named a number of accomplices, but the Secret Service already knew about them.

On April 21, 2017, Judge Richard Jones of the District Court in Seattle, Washington, sentenced Seleznev to 27 years in prison, and in fact less than 20, since almost three years spent by him in the bullpen will be deducted from this period, and the remaining one will be reduced by 15% for minimally exemplary behavior.

True, it is not clear whether Seleznev will be tried in Nevada and Georgia, where cases are also opened against him.

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