Included among the U.S. prisoners being sent back to Russia in the swap are two prominent convicted hackers, both of whom were serving lengthy sentences, and a KGB assassin.
Because foreign hackers often operate from countries like Russia that lack extradition treaties with the U.S., they rarely face American courts, making their convictions significant wins for the Justice Department.
Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian national sentenced last year to nearly a decade in prison by a federal jury in Boston for hacking into corporate earnings databases to steal and trade on nonpublic information. U.S. officials noted Klyushin’s “extensive ties” to the Russian president’s office.
Roman Seleznev, the son of a Russian parliament member, was described by prosecutors as “one of the most prolific credit-card thieves in history.” In 2016, he was convicted by a federal jury in Seattle for hacking into hundreds of businesses and selling stolen data online, leading to more than $169 million in fraud losses.
Vadim Krasikov, (picture) the Russian at the center of Thursday’s high-profile prisoner swap, has been a top priority for the Kremlin in exchange negotiations for some time. Earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin hinted at a desire for such a trade to secure the release of a “patriot” detained in Germany. Krasikov was serving a prison sentence for murder.
Krasikov was convicted of the August 23, 2019, assassination of Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen who had fought against Russian forces in Chechnya and later sought asylum in Germany. He was shot from behind with a silencer-equipped handgun near Berlin's Kleiner Tiergarten park. After the killing, witnesses saw the gunman discard a bike, a gun, and a dark wig into the nearby Spree River. Police apprehended him before he could escape on an electric scooter.
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