The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced yesterday (July 8, 2015) that VLADIMIR TSASTSIN pled guilty to wire fraud and computer intrusion charges “arising from his operation of a massive and sophisticated Internet fraud scheme that infected with malware more than four million computers located in over 100 countries.” The malware altered the settings on the infected computers which allowed TSASTSIN and other defendants the ability to hijack users’ Internet searches, reroute the searches and receive payment for the rerouted Internet traffic. TSASTSIN will be sentenced in October.

The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have also announced that ALEX YUCEL, the owner of “Blackshades” which sold and distributed malware known as “RAT” to cybercriminals worldwide for $40 a piece, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court on June 23, 2015 to 57 months in prison, as well as three years’ suspended release and forfeiture of $200,000 and computer equipment used to commit the crimes. The RAT malware could be installed on a user’s computer to infect the computer and then spread the malware to other computers—just like a rat.

YUCEL was arrested in Moldova in November 2013 for computer hacking and plead guilty in February, 2015. According to the FBI press release, Yucel was the first defendant ever to be extradited from Moldova to the U.S.

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