Russian FSB Counterintelligence Chief Gets 9 Years in Cybercrime Bribery Scheme
Summary: A Russian court sentenced former FSB officer Grigory Tsaregorodtsev, head of counterintelligence for an FSB division based in Perm, to nine years in a penal colony for accepting a $1.7 million bribe from a cybercrime group seeking a corrupt official to shield its hacking and run interference if members were arrested. The scheme surfaced in February 2022 when Russian authorities arrested six men in the Perm region and seized carding shops including Ferum Shop, Sky-Fraud and Trump's Dumps, which sold stolen payment card data harvested through web skimmers on unpatched Magento, Powerfront and OpenCart shopping carts.
Why it matters: The gang bought its protection for $1.7 million and the official who took it drew nine years, while cooperating defendants received probation or correctional labor and ringleader Artem Zaitsev got 3.5 years - a sentencing spread that tells you how Russian authorities weigh an officer's betrayal against the criminals' own.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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