Out there over the Tor community, Hydra was a bazaar that brokered not simply medicine but additionally pretend paperwork, cryptocurrency laundering providers, and different illicit items and providers. 9 months after Hydra was taken down, authorities got here for Bitzlato, a cryptocurrency alternate that laundered “a considerable portion of the cryptocurrency that Hydra obtained.” In all, authorities mentioned, Bitzlato processed roughly $4.58 billion value of cryptocurrency transactions. Anatoly Legkodymov, a then 40-year-old Russian nationwide residing in China, was arrested by US authorities within the 2023 takedown.
The opposite defendants sentenced alongside Moiseyev have been recognized as Alexander Chirkov, Andrei Trunov, Evgeny Andreyev, Ivan Koryakin, Vadim Krasninsky, Georgy Georgobiani, Artur Kolesnikov, Nikolay Bilyk, Alexander Khramov, Kirill Gusev, Anton Gaikin, Alexey Gukalin, Mikhail Dombrovsky, Alexander Aminov, and Sergey Chekh.
The sentencing follows the reported arrest on Friday by Russian authorities of Mikhail Matveyev, according to RIA Novosti. Matveyev has been linked to ransomware teams together with Babuk, Conti, DarkSide, Hive, and LockBit. US authorities say he’s needed for ransomware assaults on hundreds of entities worldwide, together with hospitals, airways, and authorities organizations. He faces prices for the creation or distribution of software program supposed to hack data programs.
In Could 2023, the US Treasury Division introduced sanctions towards Matveyev. On the similar time, the US Division of State provided a bounty of as much as $10 million for data resulting in his arrest.
The stiff sentence of Moiseyev and the arrest of Matveyev are one thing of a rarity in Russia, which has lengthy regarded the opposite approach when studying of Russian nationals pursuing cybercrime, so long as individuals contained in the nation and allied nations aren’t focused.