A court in the United States has sentenced a 27-year-old resident of Kyiv, Yehor Shevelev, who is accused of being involved in the Western Express cybercrime ring, for a term of 13 years and four months to 40 years, the Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraine newspaper has reported, citing the Attorney's Office in Manhattan.

"Under U.S. law, this means that after serving a minimum term the prisoner will be able to apply for parole, but this request can be rejected, forcing him to serve the maximum term," the newspaper wrote.

Shevelev has been under arrest for over five years. He was arrested in May 2008 in Greece, where he was on vacation.

According to the newspaper, Shevelev's father, Ukrainian scientist Anatoliy Shevelev, held a press conference in 2009 claiming that the arrest of his son was revenge against him. He said that since 1993 he had worked on the creation of a database that contained 800,000 research papers on the impact of the Chornobyl accident on human health and that in 1996-1997, he received offers from official representatives of the U.S. Department of State to continue his work in the United States, but he rejected the proposals.

"According to the U.S. secret services, his son started selling stolen card numbers at the age of 14, earning his first two million [dollars] at that time. I know that in reality at that time they suspected me and still suspect me... My son was sentenced to 40 years in prison without any direct evidence of guilt, on the basis of only one email address. The United States likes depicting Ukraine as a hotbed of piracy and hacking," Shevelev told the newspaper.

He said that lawyers hired in the U.S. had filed an appeal against the court's decision. Shevelev has currently been transferred to a maximum security prison, where he cannot contact his family, he added.

At the same time, the U.S. court considers the guilt of the Ukrainian to be proved, based on the evidence of 50 witnesses. Eleven of 17 defendants have already admitted their guilt.

According to his father, Shevelev pleaded not guilty - he has held this position since the beginning of the charges and until trial.

As reported, the Attorney's Office in Manhattan announced sentences passed in the case against a hacking syndicate that stole and sold credit card numbers and related personal data, and which involved 17 people from various countries, including Ukraine and Russia. Members of the gang sold data from more than 95,000 stolen credit cards. The gang laundered money through a New York-based company Western Express International. The prosecution said during the trial that the total losses from the gang's activities were more than $5 million.