Collaborate Disseminate
It’s the Eastern District of New York’s biggest recovery from a cybercrime to date.
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A Russian man who once described himself as the “king of fraud” for his role in orchestrating a multimillion dollar crime spree was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison. Aleksandr Zhukov, 41, was convicted in May of defrauding U.S. advertising companies out of $7 million in part by using networks of hacked computers, or botnets, to artificially inflate web traffic. Working with a small network of cybercriminals, Zhukov directed bot traffic to inauthentic websites, charging marketing companies to run advertisements on websites that attracted little, if any, real visitors. Two of Zhukov’s associates have pleaded guilty to involvement in the 3ve scheme, also known as Methbot, while six others have faced charges for the alleged roles in the effort. “Sitting at his computer keyboard in Bulgaria and Russia, Zhukov boldly devised and carried out an elaborate multi-million-dollar fraud against the digital advertising industry, and victimized thousands of companies across […]
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Nearly three years after he was arrested in a Belgium apartment, Aleksander Zhukov was seated in a Brooklyn courtroom this week to face charges of running a complex fraud scheme that netted millions of dollars. Zhukov, a Russian national, allegedly functioned as the ringleader of a scheme to use traditional cybercrime techniques to carry out a larger advertising fraud conspiracy, known as Methbot, that the U.S. Department of Justice says netted some $7 million between 2014 and 2016. The trial, scheduled to take place in the coming weeks in a Brooklen federal courtroom, is slated to include testimony from a range of FBI agents, cybersecurity executives and, as the prosecution said on Wednesday, a cooperating witness who worked with Zhukov to carry out the work. The ruse involved Zhukov’s use of a fake advertising company, which he used to charge marketing firms to run ads, prosecutors said during their opening […]
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The attorney for the accused ringleader of a $29 million cybercrime scheme is asking a U.S. federal judge to dismiss the case because the defendant is at risk of contracting COVID-19 behind bars. Aleksandr Zhukov’s lawyer argued in a court filing that U.S. authorities should release his client, who is currently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in New York City, in part because he is accused of a nonviolent crime. Zhukov is scheduled to stand trial for allegedly directing an international advertising fraud ring in which scammers have admitted using a range of known hacking techniques to commandeer victims’ computers to view internet ads. Two members of the so-called Methbot/3ve conspiracy have pleaded guilty, while Zhukov has maintained his innocence in the effort to defraud victims out of $29 million. He has spent more than a year in the federal jail, where 14 inmates have tested positive for […]
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U.S. police have arrested another suspect in connection with an advertising fraud conspiracy that relied on run-of-the-mill hacking techniques to scam American companies out of roughly $30 million, according to new court documents. Police in New York City this month arrested Sergey Denisoff on charges that he allegedly helped members of the Methbot ad fraud crew by setting up dummy web pages where other conspirators could direct illegitimate traffic. Members then charged U.S. advertising companies for access to visitors who didn’t actually exist. Denisoff supplied fake domains, helped Methbot members circumvent cybersecurity software meant to stop this kind of fraud and was in regular communication with alleged ringleader Aleksandr Zhukov, an NYPD detective said in an affidavit first noticed by Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Subsequent documents filed Jan. 19 in the Eastern District of New York indicate Denisoff was released on $100,000 bond. His […]
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Two men accused of participating in the multimillion-dollar Methbot digital-advertising fraud scheme are scheduled to plead guilty in the coming days, according to court filings from the Eastern District of New York. Sergey Ovysannikov and Yevgeniy Timchenko, both originally from Kazakhstan, are scheduled to appear in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn on Sept. 24 and Sept. 25, respectively, to enter plea agreements before Judge Steven M. Gold. Both men initially pleaded not guilty after they were extradited to the U.S. earlier this year. A third man, Methbot’s alleged ringleader, Aleksandr Zhukov, has promised to fight the charges against him. Prosecutors say the operation relied on cybercriminal techniques to defraud companies out of roughly $29 million. Few details of the plea agreements were immediately available. Arkady Bukh, defense counsel for Ovysannikov, declined to say to which counts his client intends to plead guilty. Attorneys for Timchenko did not respond Friday to phone […]
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Maybe the only thing more complicated than the Methbot advertising fraud scheme was the plan that ultimately shut it all down. Last year, the FBI led a takedown operation that, with help from the bot detection firm White Ops and more than a dozen other companies, resulted in the arrest of three accused fraudsters in three different countries, as well as the seizure of more than 50 web servers and numerous bank accounts. The law operation, detailed Wednesday by FBI officials at the International Conference on Cyber Security, targeted the Methbot/3ve fraud scheme. The ad-fraud ring defrauded digital advertisers and web publishers out of more than $30 million by charging marketers for access to internet users who didn’t actually exist, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Advertising fraud, already a billion-dollar problem, is set to cost the ad industry $44 billion by 2022. The investigation, which lasted more than […]
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Aleksandr Zhukov is not happy. The accused leader of an advertising fraud scheme that U.S. officials say defrauded international companies out of millions of dollars wrote a letter last week to Judge Edward Korman of the Eastern District of New York asking for assistance in finding new legal representation. Zhukov, in the note submitted Friday, asked the judge to appoint Simone Bertollini, a New York-based attorney, as his public defender. He hopes to hire Bertollini because of the attorney’s representation of Fabio Gasperini, an Italian man convicted in 2017 of operating a botnet of 100,000 hacked computers for malicious purposes. Bertollini would replace Igor Litvak, another New York-based attorney who withdrew from the case in March because of Zhukov’s inability to pay his legal fees. Litvak also appeared to be negotiating with prosecutors seeking a plea deal, though it’s clear now Zhukov intends to go to trial. In his letter to Korman, […]
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A Kazakh national accused of helping coordinate an advertising fraud scheme that fleeced companies out of tens of millions of dollars will plead not guilty when he arrives in the U.S. to stand trial, his lawyer told CyberScoop. Sergey Ovsyannikov is scheduled to be extradited to the U.S. in the coming weeks, a Kazakh consulate official told CyberScoop last week. When Ovsyannikov arrives in court, he will plead not guilty to charges that he led the 3ve botnet-based scheme to falsify billions of advertisements, costing businesses $29 million between December 2015 and October 2018, according to defense attorney Arkady Bukh. “At the arraignment, the plea will be entered as not guilty,” Bukh said. “Then we’ll go over the [evidence] and…we’ll see if the government is in a position to prove any guilt.” His presence in court will mark the third time an accused member of the 3ve/Methbot group was extradited […]
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Alleged perpetrators of the Methbot and 3ve cybercrime rings have started to arrive in the U.S. to face accusations that they orchestrated a broad conspiracy to defraud advertisers for millions of dollars. Yevgeniy Timchenko, a 30-year-old citizen of Kazakhstan, appeared Wednesday in federal district court in Brooklyn alongside Aleksandr Zhukov, a Russian national, in a short status hearing. Both men had bald heads with facial hair and stood before the judge in beige jumpsuits. Lawyers asked for more time to review discovery materials in a case where the evidence is “extremely voluminous” and comes in multiple languages, including Russian and Bulgarian. The Department of Justice has linked Timchenko to 3ve and Zhukov to Methbot, two distinct ad-fraud operations outlined in the same indictment unsealed in November. Both groups used botnet-based schemes to boost web traffic numbers in plots to collect money from legitimate advertising companies lured into investing in seemingly trustworthy businesses. Members of Methbot and 3ve (pronounced “eve”), while working in different […]
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