Russian credit card hacker gets 27 years in prison

The Seattle District Court has sentenced Russian credit card hacker Roman Seleznev to 27 years in prison. In 2014, the hacker stole millions of credit card numbers from retail chains such as Target and Neiman Marcus.

The US had been eyeing the hacker for some time, but little could be done as Seleznev made sure he only went into countries that do not have an extradition treaty with America. He usually stayed at his house on the Indonesian island of Bali, or in Vladivostok, Russia. In 2014 he went on vacation to the Maldives. That country also does not have an extradition treaty with the US, but the authorities there could still be convinced to cooperate with an extradition.

When Seleznev was arrested, authorities also seized evidence suggesting he was running a large-scale credit card fraud operation. The New York Times court report shows that the Russian has caused at least 158 ​​million euros in damage with his practices, but that amount could grow to more than a billion, depending on how much further damage can still be mapped. In total, two million credit card numbers were stolen from 3,700 financial institutions and 500 companies worldwide.

In August 2016, a jury found Seleznev guilty, but the verdict was still awaited. The prosecutor asked for a prison sentence of 30 years, which could have been a maximum of 34 years. The final sentence of 27 years in prison is not particularly far from that. According to The New York Times, it is simultaneously the largest damage and the most severe sentence of all time in an American hacking case.