Accused Russian hacker extradited to the U.S., four others charged

A Russian accused of computer hacking as part of an illegal trading scheme was extradited from Switzerland to the U.S., the Justice Department said Monday.

Vladislav Klyushin was arrested in March and sent to America on Saturday. Four other Russians were also charged in the scheme and remain at large, including Ivan Ermakov, a former officer with the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency who was previously charged over his alleged role in 2016 election hacking, according to the Justice Department.

“As alleged, Klyushin and his co-defendants used various illegal and malicious means to gain access to computer networks for their illegal trading scheme,” said Albert Murray III, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office Criminal and Cyber Division. “These crimes have real consequences. And, as our efforts in this case demonstrate, the FBI is relentless in our work to identify and locate criminals like Klyushin — no matter where they are — and bring them to the U.S. to face justice.”

The five Russians agreed to trade securities between January 2018 and September 2020 based on non-public information that was obtained via hacking into companies whose products are used by publicly traded companies to make quarterly and annual filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to Justice.

Snap Inc., which owns the social media platform Snapchat, and Tesla, were among the companies whose financial data was improperly accessed by the hackers, according to the indictment.

“Armed with this information before it was disclosed to the public, Klyushin and his codefendants allegedly knew ahead of time, among other things, whether a company’s financial performance would meet, exceed, or lag market expectations of that performance — and they traded accordingly, in brokerage accounts held in their own names and in the names of others,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “It is alleged that Klyushin and his co-conspirators earned tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits.”

Mr. Klyushin, Mr. Ermakov, and Nikolai Rumiantcev, all worked at M-13, a Moscow-based company whose clients included the Russian government.

According to Swiss media, the Russians made an extradition request for Mr. Klyushin in April which was rejected by the Swiss justice ministry in August.

In between Russia’s alleged extradition request and its denial, President Biden met in June with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland, and detailed the American critical infrastructure sectors Mr. Biden wanted to be off-limits to Russian attackers.