15:00 29.07.2013

US puts Ukrainian hacker on wanted list, says Foreign Ministry

2 min read

The information policy department of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has confirmed that five people, including one Ukrainian national, have been charged in the United States with creating an elaborate hacking scheme for stealing personal and corporate databases.

U.S. law-enforcers have arrested two of them, while the other three, including the Ukrainian citizen, have been put on a wanted list, the Foreign Ministry reported on July 26 quoting Ukraine's Consulate General in New York.

According to the foreign ministry, the charges were brought on July 25 in the city of Newark, New Jersey. Earlier, the U.S. Attorney's Office launched criminal proceedings against the hackers.

The Associated Press earlier reported, the U.S. Attorney's Office on July 25 charged four Russian citizens and a citizen of Ukraine with the creation of a computer hacking gang.

The prosecutor's office said that the gang penetrated the computer networks of more than a dozen major U.S. and international corporations over seven years, stealing and selling at least 160 million credit and debit card numbers, resulting in losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The defendants were identified as four Russian citizens - Vladimir Drinkman, 32, Roman Kotov, 32, Dmitriy Smilianets, 29, and Aleksander Kalinin, and a resident of Odesa, Mikhail Rytikov, 26.

Prosecutors called the case the largest hacking and data breach scheme ever prosecuted in the United States.

Among the companies that were attacked by the hackers were Belgian bank Dexia, French retailer Carrefour, Heartland Payment Systems, and the U.S. Nasdaq electronic stock exchange.

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