Hacker who loved to live lavishly gets 9 years in prison

A Russian-born American hacker who hacked into more than half a million computers and stole tens of thousands of credit card numbers has been sentenced to nine years in prison by a US court.

Illustration photo - Photo: Reuters

According to the Daily Beast, before being arrested, hacker Aleksandr Tverdokhlebov lived a lavish life in Los Angeles, owned a BMW and frequently traveled in luxury.

Not only that, after this man was arrested, the authorities also seized about 4.5 million USD worth of bitcoin from him.

US authorities described Aleksandr Tverdokhlebov as “an exceptionally sophisticated and well-connected cybercriminal” who is accused of using malware to steal money from thousands of US bank accounts.

Tverdokhlebov was arrested in a raid on February 1 this year on charges that he and a Russian associate had teamed up to attack US financial institutions in 2009 and 2010.

Over the years, Tverdokhlebov sold at least 40,000 stolen credit card numbers and controlled about 500,000 personal computers through malware. He also stole confidential financial information from at least 100 people.

He is accused of using a botnet to attack 10,000 personal computers. US authorities discovered Aleksandr Tverdokhlebov while examining online chats of another Russian hacker, Vadim Polyakov, 32, living in St. Petersburg (Russia), who pleaded guilty last year to a multi-million dollar concert ticket scam.

Tverdokhlebov, born in Russia, received US citizenship in 2009 after marrying an American woman. However, according to prosecutors, the couple have since divorced.

Tverdokhlebov was arrested in February 2017 in California. In March of this year, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison by a court in Los Angeles last weekend.

Since his arrest, it has taken US agents several days to gain access to his safe deposit boxes.

Accordingly, in his three safes in California, people found the safes stuffed with $100 bills totaling $172,000. Then they found a fourth safe in Las Vegas with another $100,000.

According to Tuoi Tre