The Seleznev case: the dishonest confession of a Russian hacker convicted in the United States. The kidnapping of the prodigal son Seleznev court
Roman Seleznev with Anna and her daughter. Photo: AFP
American justice rarely manages to reach out to Russian hackers and carders, who constantly carry out hacking in the United States and siphon billions of dollars from the US banking system. But when this is successful and if guilt is proven, the guys receive maximum sentences.
On Friday, April 21, 2017, the Federal District Court in Seattle sentenced 27 years in prison Roman Valeryevich Seleznev, a 32-year-old citizen of the Russian Federation, son of Valery Seleznev, a current deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation from the LDPR party.
Roman is known on underground forums under the nicknames Bulba, Track2, 2pac, nCuX, etc. He himself traded dumps through the sites POS Dumps, track2.tv, bulba.cc, 2ras.ss - the latter sold millions of dumps taken from Target store terminals, Neiman Marcus, Michaels, Staples and Home Depot, in 2013-2014 it was the largest dump store on the Internet.
Roman Seleznev was put on the wanted list by Interpol with a “red notice”. He was detained at the airport in the resort city of Male in the Maldives by American intelligence agents on charges of computer fraud, hacking, hacking of bank accounts and theft of credit card dumps and causing damage to US citizens and organizations in the amount of about $2 million. After that, he was transported to the United States.
The Western District Federal Court in Seattle charged Roman with hacking retail point-of-sale systems throughout the United States in 2009-2011. According to the indictment, from his homes and apartments in Vladivostok, Indonesia and Bali, he operated international card forum sites to facilitate the theft and sale of stolen credit card data. 1.7 million dumps were found on Seleznev’s laptop, and more than $18 million in bank accounts obtained as a result of illegal transactions. These funds, in particular, were used to purchase two apartments in Bali with a total cost of $800 thousand.
On the computer they also found photographs of Roman driving various sports cars, as well as next to stacks of banknotes similar to 5,000 ruble bills.
According to proven episodes, Seleznev’s schemes made it possible to resell more than two million credit cards, which led to losses for the US banking system of more than $170 million. If we take into account the overall work of Roman’s carder forums, the total damage could amount to billions of dollars. Among the victims are 3,700 financial institutions and 500 companies around the world, mainly in the United States. For this reason, federal prosecutors call Seleznev “the biggest fish” from the carding world that has ever fallen into the hands of American justice.
In a handwritten letter to the court, Roman spoke about the problems of his difficult childhood in Vladivostok, about his alcoholic mother and how at the age of 17 he barely had enough money to pay for food and utilities. These difficulties forced him to make “the biggest mistake of his life,” as Roman writes, that is, they forced him to take up carding. He stole credit cards and other data that could be resold. Over time, he improved his hacking abilities and increased his volume. Then things got even more serious. He became rich, married Svetlana and moved to Bali. In general, a typical story of a Russian carder. The tragedy happened after the terrorist attack in Marrakesh in 2011, where Roman’s part of his head was blown off, he fell into a coma for a long time, his wife left him and went to the USA with all the money and daughter. After emerging from a coma, Roman returned to carding, met a Ukrainian woman, Anna, whom he fell in love with, and she is still fighting for him with American justice.
The hacker's common-law wife Anna Otisko and father, Russian State Duma deputy Valery Seleznev, after the press conference. Photo: ITAR-TASS
The US Secret Service had been tracking Roman Seleznev for more than a decade, according to court documents. The search resulted in a successful arrest in June 2014 in the Maldives.
It is curious that the Maldives does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, so Roman felt safe there - and purchased real estate. However, Interpol and the US Department of Justice through the State Department managed to reach an agreement with law enforcement agencies in the Maldives to help detain the Russian. For this purpose, a special plan was developed, according to which the hacker was detained at the airport right before boarding a plane flying to Russia.
Agents placed Roman under surveillance immediately after he arrived in Male. During his journey from the terminal to the airport, he was already under close surveillance: several agents were sitting with him on the bus, a couple of rows behind him. As soon as Roman handed over his passport to control at the airport, he was immediately handcuffed.
Local authorities simultaneously announced the expulsion of Roman from the country. Instead of a plane home, American intelligence services put the Russian on a private plane, which took him to a prison on the American island of Guam, and from there he was transported to the United States.
Deputy Seleznev subsequently offered $50 thousand for the video recording of his son’s detention and expressed the opinion that economic sanctions should be introduced against the Maldives.
In August 2016, the jury found Seleznev’s guilt proven in 38 episodes of the criminal case. Of these, ten relate to cyber fraud and nine relate to unauthorized access to computer networks. The prosecutor asked for 30 years in prison for Roman, and on April 21, 2017, the judge issued such a verdict, taking into account the fact that Roman had already served three years.
Informative commentary by SBKarr
For those wondering where 27 years old is from
The gentleman is accused of 40 counts of criminal activity (felony), of which 38 are related to hacking. In US law, episodes are grouped, after which each group is either summed up or absorbed by the largest. The largest group is presented as punishment. In addition, there are crimes that are not grouped and are summed up unconditionally by the deadline.
In the court decision, the episodes are grouped as follows (I will try to translate them so as to roughly correspond to our legal terminology:
- 1-10 - Fraud using electronic digital means (Wire Fraud) - 336 months
- 12-19 - Intentional damage to electronic computing devices performing important operational functions (Intentional Damage to a Protected Computer) together with
- 21-29 - Illegally obtaining access to secret/protected information (Obtaining Information from a Protected Computer) - 60 months
- 30-38 - Illegal access to devices (Access Device Fraud) - 120 months
Counts 11 and 20 appeared to relate to organizing criminal activity and the jury found they were not proven.
Now about some interesting things.
In addition to this system, the United States has developed a special scoring table that makes it possible to formalize aggravating parameters and increase the sentence in proportion to the severity. For Seleznev, the table takes into account, for example, the following points:
- Loss in excess of $550 million - total financial losses exceed 550 million
10 or more victims - more than 10 victims - Scheme committed from outside of the U.S. - the crime was committed from outside the United States
- Organizer/leader - the defendant is the leader of a criminal organization
- Obstruction of justice - the defendant obstructed the administration of justice
All the more surprising is the fact that these calculations are included in the conclusion, since, according to American laws, they are not relevant to the case and should have been withdrawn and excluded from the testimony for the jury. In my personal opinion, this is evidence of the low quality of legal assistance provided to a citizen of the Russian Federation, since such calculations clearly set the jury against the defendant.
You can notice something odd in the verdict; in the description of the groups of episodes, the following is written:
as to each of counts 1-10 (Wire Fraud), defendant shall serve 336 months to be run concurrently with one another, and also concurrently with all other counts except counts 39 and 40
That is, the sentence for episodes must be served together with other episodes, and together with other groups of episodes. If you think about it, this means that for 1 episode of Wire Froud they give 28 (!) years. This incident is a historical feature of the United States. Fraud involving federal communications (postal services, telecom operators) and financial (banks) institutions is a particularly serious crime in the United States.
The proposed scheme of charges is interesting, according to which the charges against Seleznev were prepared in several states at once, and the episodes were distributed among all. At least two states were preparing to bring charges under the mentioned RICO Act, requiring life imprisonment. The interesting thing is this: in any legal country no one can be tried for the same crime twice, but in the USA a person can be tried for the same crime several times in different states if the charges do not completely coincide in the episodes. That is, it is worth replacing one episode with one for which no charges were brought - and a new trial in another state is ready. There are a lot of episodes in the Seleznev case.
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32-year-old Roman Seleznev pleaded guilty in a US court in a cyber fraud case: he is accused of stealing bank card data and causing damage in the amount of $170 million.
Despite the confession stated by Seleznev in an 11-page letter, the prosecutor is asking for a 30-year prison sentence for the hacker. Taking into account all the details of the case, this is a rather lenient punishment, since the charges brought imply a life sentence.
Hacking out of desperation
A US jury found Roman Seleznev guilty of cyber fraud in August 2016. According to data Ministry of Justice, a hacker hacked into payment terminals to steal bank card data from there and then resell it on the black market. As a result of his actions, several businesses were damaged, mostly restaurants, including the Broadway Grill in Seattle, which went bankrupt after Seleznev's cyberattack.
The information obtained by the hacker was sent to servers in Russia, Ukraine and McLean, Virginia. After that, Seleznev sold the data to buyers who used it for financial fraud.
It is reported that 3.7 thousand financial institutions suffered from Seleznev’s scheme, losing a total of over $169 million.
“I take full responsibility for everything. I’m afraid of punishment, but I’m glad that I was finally caught, since the life of a criminal is not life,” Seleznev writes in a letter of recognition written in English. He added that he should have used his talents for the benefit of humanity, but veered off the right path and became “selfish and greedy.”
“I can't blame anyone but myself. I myself committed these crimes and will answer for them as a man,” the hacker repents.
According to information The Daily Beast, in his letter to the court, Roman Seleznev talks about his difficult fate, which pushed him to illegally engage in hacking. His parents divorced when he was two years old, after which his mother raised him herself.
As a teenager, he became interested in computers and realized he had a knack for them. When Roman was 17 years old, his mother had an accident - she drowned in the bathtub while intoxicated. He was forced to drop out of college and look for work.
In 2001, hacker groups in Eastern Europe began to gradually take shape, as a result of which the first “card” forum Carder Planet appeared - it gathered thousands of cyber fraudsters involved in credit card fraud. Evidence was presented in court that Seleznev became one of the first members of the forum under the nickname nCuX.
“I found a place that accepted me. At the age of 17, it seemed to me that this was my family,” recalls Roman. From that moment on, Seleznev became a hacker, hacking into other people's computers in search of information that could be sold.
In 2009, Seleznev was attacked in his own home by a gang of attackers who knew about his financial situation. According to the cybercriminal, they tortured him and then stole his laptop, cash and a list of passwords, leaving him with virtually nothing.
In 2011, misfortune struck him again. Roman and his wife Svetlana visited Marrakech to meet Seleznev’s father. They were in a popular tourist cafe when a bomb exploded, triggered by a terrorist.
Then 17 people died, and Roman received a serious skull injury and was urgently sent to Moscow. He was in a coma for two weeks, but was able to get out and get back on his feet within three months, and a year later he began to speak again. After some time, he returned to hacking.
Describing all the trials that befell him, Seleznev emphasized that he was “a desperate child who grew into a desperate man.” He ended the letter with gratitude for being alive, as things could have ended much worse.
Kidnapping in the Maldives
Roman Seleznev was detained by American intelligence agencies in the Maldives in 2014. On his laptop, information was found on 1.7 million stolen bank cards and some additional evidence linking him to the servers, email accounts and financial transactions that were involved in the fraudulent scheme.
Then a deputy of the Russian State Duma stood up for his son, who told reporters in detail about Roman’s health condition.
“I can only explain Roman’s detention as a monstrous mistake. Roman couldn't be a hacker because he couldn't. After a terrorist attack in Morocco in 2011, where he was severely injured and miraculously survived, he is in a state that constantly requires rehabilitation and medication,” the parliamentarian emphasized.
Answering the question whether he would exchange his son for someone who found refuge in Russia, the deputy noted that we are talking about different categories, but in the end he could not restrain himself and stated that as a father he would exchange him “even for the bald devil.”
“No legal procedures involving local authorities necessary for extradition were carried out. Even the arrest itself was carried out by American agents operating on Maldivian territory in the rapid style of a special operation, regardless of any legal formalities. Thus, a Russian citizen was literally kidnapped, which is a gross violation of the laws of any civilized state and international law,” the department’s official statement said.
In 2015, Russian authorities banned entry into the country of four US Department of Justice employees who were involved in Seleznev’s detention.
They say that they are all elite majors - the children of these State Duma deputies....
But don’t rush to envy, everything is in God’s hands, everyone is somehow rewarded for everything in the end...
So good news came from the sunny Maldives - the 30-year-old son of State Duma deputy from the LDPR Valery Seleznev was received and extradited to the United States...
My son's name is Roman Seleznev and he is accused of major cyber fraud; he hacked the websites of American banks and apparently gained access to depositors' accounts...
Now his major life may come to an end for 20-30 years, American laws on this article are harsh...
Out of grief, Seleznev Sr. lost his last remnants of his deputy mind and understanding of reality http://lifenews.ru/news/136216:
“Russian citizen Roman Seleznev, detained by US law enforcement agencies in the Maldives and arrested by a court on the island of Guam on charges of hacking, is deprived of the assistance of lawyers. His father, State Duma deputy Valery Seleznev, proposed imposing sanctions against the Maldives.”
“In the Maldives, Roman Seleznev was not detained, but was kidnapped by persons posing as employees of the US Secret Service, his relatives claim. According to them, the Americans took Roman from the airport in Male in the Maldives, where he was vacationing with his common-law wife and child, on a private plane in the direction of the Philippines and then to the island of Guam, where the US military base is located."
"US intelligence agencies consider the 30-year-old alleged hacker one of the most dangerous computer scammers. According to the Washington State Attorney's Office, he hacked into the sales systems of stores, restaurants and entertainment venues, installed malicious software in them that stole bank card data, and then sold the resulting information."
And all the hypocrisy of the Russian authorities...
They are trying to force all the Russians to vacation in Crimea and Sochi, while they and their children squander the money from the Russian budget exclusively in the Maldives and Canary Islands...
But they themselves would listen to their bullshit propaganda, and the major hacker Roma would go with his civil wife and child (by the way, who is the child’s father and how old is his common-law wife???) to Crimea, now he would be tanned and happy.. .
Moreover, this is not the first unsuccessful experience of vacationing abroad for Seleznev Jr....
This is what happened to him while on vacation at another expensive and prestigious resort in 2011. http://www.newsru.com/world/28apr2011/marokko.html
“A powerful explosion occurred on Thursday in a cafe in the famous Moroccan resort city of Marrakesh. According to the latest data, 18 people were killed and more than 20 were injured. Among the dead were many foreigners, most of them, as authorities confirmed, are citizens of European countries, reports RIA News" .
The Russian Embassy in Morocco initially reported that two Russians were injured in the emergency. This is a married couple, the husband was seriously injured, the wife slightly injured. An embassy spokesman said the man is currently undergoing surgery at a clinic in Marrakesh. Now employees of the Russian Consulate General in Casablanca have left for this city. "
“A few hours later, the press attache of the Russian embassy in Rabat, Alexander Gulyaev, reported that the son of a Russian State Duma deputy was injured in an explosion in Morocco Valeria Selezneva, it is he who is now undergoing surgery in the hospital. “One of the victims of the explosion in Marrakesh is called Roman Seleznev, he is in serious condition in a Marrakesh hospital, where he is undergoing surgery. With him is his wife Svetlana Selezneva, who received minor injuries,” he said.”
As we see, three years ago Roman Seleznyov was officially married to Svetlana Seleznyova, had a blast in Marrakesh, got into trouble there, but did not draw the right conclusions...
As I understand it, this major Roma continued to travel around prestigious foreign resorts, either with his official wife, or with his common-law wives and their children....
Here we are...
By the way, his lip is not stupid - not some Turkey and Egypt (even if the Russian suckers and their Natashas go there), or Marrakech, or the Maldives...
In Marrakech, they say, a year ago the wedding of one of Putin’s daughters took place—i.e. the place is famous among the Russian elite, although there is no ocean nearby, this city is located in the depths of Morroco...
Seleznev Sr. himself is also a personality, although not particularly well known to voters, but in his own way typical for a deputy of the Russian State Duma...
Valera Seleznev was born in 1964. in Vladivostok, where he graduated from the Institute of Soviet Trade, i.e. From his youth, he was focused on a crystal-honest life on one salary; most likely, he came from a family of respected Soviet trade workers (these were the ones who mostly entered this thieves’ university then)...
And, as we see, he never changed the principles of his youth...
"Before being elected as a deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation of the fifth convocation - General Director of Dalzoloto LLC (Vladivostok)."
Those. Seleznev Sr. is a real oligarch...
Another interesting point - Seleznyov’s father is now fifty dollars, and his son Roma is thirty...
In principle, some temperamental Vladivostok girl could have gotten pregnant from 19-year-old student Valerka Seleznyov...
But this is still unlikely...
Most likely, the oligarch and deputy Seleznev’s wife is older than him and already had a child, Roma, when Seleznev Sr. married her...
In general, everything is not easy in the life of the rich, as we see, they also cry...
On Friday, April 21, a federal court in Seattle sentenced Russian Roman Seleznev to 27 years in prison for cyber fraud. The son of Russian State Duma deputy from the LDPR Valery Seleznev was found guilty of stealing credit card numbers and reselling them on the black market.
Roman Seleznev was arrested in 2014 in the Maldives. 1.7 million credit card numbers were found on his laptop. The Russian was taken to the United States, where a jury found him guilty on 38 of 40 charges, including wire fraud, bank fraud, computer hacking and identity theft. According to the indictment, Seleznev’s actions caused approximately $170 million in damages to credit companies.
The case attracted intense media attention around the world from the very beginning. Firstly, the hacker turned out to be the son of a State Duma deputy. Secondly, many were sure that the Americans simply kidnapped Roman Seleznev with the help of local police in the Maldives. Thirdly, Roman was different from many other hackers who had previously been put on trial for similar crimes.
The prosecutor demanded that Seleznev be deprived of his freedom for a period of 30 years. In his closing argument, the prosecutor emphasized: “From behind a keyboard in Vladivostok and Bali, Indonesia, Seleznev and his accomplices hacked into thousands of computers around the world, including the systems of numerous small businesses in the Western District of Washington. Seleznev stole millions of credit card numbers from these computers, which he then sold to other criminals for use in fraudulent transactions. But Roman Seleznev not only stole and sold credit card data. "He was a criminal entrepreneur whose innovations transformed the illegal carding industry."
The Russian hacker, the US prosecutor claims, created two automated points of sale of credit card details, which allowed criminals to easily find and buy stolen data. As prosecutors put it, “these stores made carding as easy as buying a book on Amazon.com.”
Roman Seleznev then created, under the pseudonym 2Pac, “an online market where dozens of notorious hackers sold the credit card data they had stolen.” While providing supply of stolen information, Seleznev at the same time stimulated demand for it by organizing the POS Dumps website, where thousands of new criminals learned the basics of using this data for fraudulent purposes.
According to prosecutors, “Seleznev enriched himself from these activities and lived large at the expense of law-abiding taxpayers, whose businesses suffered losses or were destroyed as a result of Seleznev’s attacks.”
“Roman Seleznev also brought enormous losses to financial institutions. The known losses associated with his crimes alone amount to approximately $170 million. Its victims include 3,700 different financial institutions, more than 500 companies around the world and millions of credit card holders.” The prosecutor's office believes that the total amount of damage caused by Seleznev and his accomplices exceeds a billion dollars.
The prosecutor's office noted that, in theory, Seleznev was even entitled to life imprisonment for the 38 crimes of which the Seattle jury found him guilty. “Roman Seleznev appears to have harmed more victims and caused more losses than any other defendant ever brought before this court,” the prosecutor said. Calling on the judge to impose an unprecedentedly harsh sentence on the Russian, he noted that Roman is “a person with extraordinary talent for computers and an extraordinary acumen for business, but time after time he chose to take on cybercrimes, and each time he expanded the scale of his criminal enterprises and the scope harm caused to them."
The prosecutor is confident that “after his release, Seleznev will return to Russia, where he will again become inaccessible to American law enforcement officers.” “The sentence should be based on the fact that Seleznev would not have the opportunity to carry out his cyber attacks for many, many years,” the prosecutor said.
Seleznev first met with prosecutors in December 2014, that is, five months after he was arrested in the Maldives and handed over to the Americans. The idea was that he would provide information to the investigation and thereby make his fate easier. At that time, Roman still had data that could be useful in the investigation of other crimes. However, the Russian tried to bargain for too much for himself. He did not agree to the proposed conditions and did not share information.
Seleznev made his next attempt in May 2015. But the data he had was already outdated and was no longer of interest. For 20 months, the Russian did not tell prosecutors anything, but after the jury returned a guilty verdict, he again expressed a desire to cooperate with the authorities. The last meetings in this regard took place on March 28 and 29, 2017, that is, shortly before the sentence, which Seleznev hoped to reduce in this way. He admitted his guilt and pointed to the people with whom he dealt on forums for carders (hackers involved in theft and processing of credit card data). He also named some of the accomplices with whom he carried out fraudulent crimes from 2006 until his arrest in 2014.
However, the data that Seleznev finally handed over to prosecutors “had historical interest,” but could no longer help law enforcement officers in their current work.
Then Roman made one last attempt - he wrote an 11-page letter to the judge, in which he tried to evoke pity and sympathy for himself. The BBC Russian service provides excerpts from this message from Seleznev:
“I have made many bad choices in my life, and I accept responsibility for those choices. I'm not perfect and I've done bad things. I can't blame anyone or anything but myself! I did it and now I will answer for my crimes as a man. During the trial, I listen carefully to the innocent victims of my crime. I want to mourn them myself. Some of them even lost their business because of me. I feel terrible that so many people have suffered because of me.
Please understand that I was a desperate child who grew into a desperate person. I want to make amends for my wrongdoings and make things right to the best of my ability. Today I am alive and thank God and the government of the United States of America.
When I was 7 years old, my mother bought an apartment from her brother. She did not pay the full amount up front and must pay in installments each year. My mother and I had a very hard time in those years. We live very poorly, and it hurts me, a child, to see how hard it is for my mother every day. She works hard as a cashier at a local store. Most of the time I was home alone while my mother worked hard. I taught myself computer technology. I showed my abilities at a young age, and it was clear to everyone that I could achieve a lot in life.
While I was growing up, I was sad to see that my mother drank alcohol very often and sometimes without stopping for seven days. My mother was an alcoholic. She loves me very much and does what she can. The problem is that she drinks and causes a lot of pain to both of us. I had no one except her, and I was very afraid for her. The tragedy happened when I was 17 years old, my mother dies and leaves. I come home from school, I found my mother drowned in the bathtub. She dies due to alcohol poisoning. I panicked and cried for a long time, it hurt me to lose my mother..."
Seleznev further recalls how he entered the path of computer crime and began to succeed. One day, bandits broke into his place, tortured him all night and forced him to give up all his money and passwords. So he decided to acquire real estate in Bali.
While on vacation in Morocco, he became a victim of a terrorist attack. A suicide bomber exploded next to him. Roman lost “a fair amount of his skull,” which is now being replaced by a titanium plate, and spent several months in a Moscow hospital. He was again drawn into “computer crime,” but his arrest saved him from “further sliding down an inclined plane.”
The letter ends with the following words : “Today I am alive and thank God and the government of the United States of America. Before my arrest, I was heading down a very dangerous road. Thank you very much. R.S."
The judge showed the letter to the prosecutor. He stated that he did not consider it to be the defendant’s sincere repentance. After the judge sentenced Seleznev to 27 years, Roman’s lawyer read out his written statement, in which there were no thanks to the American authorities: “I was kidnapped by the US and they know it's true. I respect and understand the need for justice, but there was no justice today.”
Criminal cases have been initiated against Roman Seleznev in two more American states. It is not yet clear whether trials will be initiated there, or whether federal prosecutors in those states will be satisfied with the verdict handed down in Seattle.
Meanwhile, on April 21, another Russian, Pyotr Levashov, was charged in the United States. He is accused of hacking thousands of computers to gain access to users' personal data. He was detained on April 8, 2017 in Barcelona on the basis of an international warrant issued by Interpol in accordance with a request from the United States. Levashov operated a botnet called Kelihos, which distributed huge volumes of emails. Kelihos could also install malicious software on computers that intercepted passwords from users' bank accounts.
