Dutch Court Approves Data Hacker’s Extradition to the US

A Dutch judge has approved the extradition of a Russian man accused of a multi-million dollar corporate hack to the US.

The Hague District Court ruling would now allow for the Russian hacker Vladimir Drinkman who has been accused of stealing more than 160 million credit card details with three other Russian men and a Ukrainian man to be prosecuted in New Jersey.

The five suspects have been accused of stealing and selling credit and debit card information from companies like Nasdaq, Carrefour and JetBlue. Three of the corporate victims reported combined losses of more than $300 million, according to the Guardian.

The judge passed the ruling after Drinkman’s lawyer made an appeal to avoid him from being prosecuted in New Jersey stating that the defendant might be prosecuted in other states, which would be a violation of the US-Netherland extradition agreement.

While Drinkman was arrested along with Russian national Roman Smilianets in Netherlands in June 2012, the three other defendants namely Alexandr Kalinin, Roman Kotov and Ukrainian Mikhail Rytikov remain at large. Drinkman has been fighting his extradition since his arrest, according to the AP News.

In the team, Kanilin and Drinkman have been described as network security beach experts capable of accessing networks of major corporations. Whereas, Kotov has been said to be the mining expert operating on networks the other two opened up. The team would install malicious codes and malware onto computers for mining login details of bank accounts, identification details and credit and debit card details.

Stolen American credit card details were said to be worth $10 each, Canadian one’s worth $15 each, and European one’s worth $50 each. The stolen details would then be sold off to an individuals capable of encoding the data onto blank plastic cards, which could then be used to make purchases and withdraw cash.

According to the Guardian, US investigators who were on trail of the hackers for at least four years describe the estimate of 160 million stolen credit cards as conservative.

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