The Kirovsky District Court of Yekaterinburg sentenced 21 members of the Lurk hacker group, which stole about 1.2 billion rubles from a number of companies and banks.
The defendants were sentenced to five to fourteen years in prison. The leader of the group, Konstantin Kozlovsky, received the maximum term. The convicts, who have not admitted their guilt, intend to appeal the verdict.
The trial of the Lurk group began in May 2019 and lasted about three years. The reason for this is the large volume of materials; there are 2.5 thousand volumes in the file. The coronavirus pandemic also played a role, due to which meetings were often postponed.
The Kirovsky District Court of Yekaterinburg began to announce the verdict on February 8, 2022, and finished only today, February 14.
In total, there are 23 defendants in the Lurk case, one of whom, Igor Makovkin, entered into a pre-trial agreement in 2018 and was already sentenced to five years in prison, and the second, the alleged organizer of the group Vladimir Gritsan, is now on the wanted list.
The defendants were charged under Parts 1 and 2 of Art. 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (leadership of a criminal community and participation in a criminal community); Part 4 Art. 159.6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud in the field of computer information, on an especially large scale); Part 3 Art. 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (illegal access to computer information) and part 2 of Art. 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs).
Members of the group received from 5 years 1 month to 14 years in prison (the state prosecution requested from 6 to 18 years in prison for the accused).
The maximum term was assigned to the leader of the group, Konstantin Kozlovsky. Three convicts will serve their sentences in a strict regime colony, the rest in a general one. The court granted the defendant Valentina Ryakina a reprieve from serving her sentence until her child turns 14 years old. The verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed to the Sverdlovsk Regional Court.
Lurk participants were detained at the end of May 2016 in 15 regions of Russia. According to investigators, the group was created in 2013. It had a clear hierarchy, its members used pseudonyms without revealing their names to each other. They communicated using the Jabber messenger and by e-mail. Some members of Lurk have been developing malware, others have been testing it. A number of convicts, as the investigation believes, were engaged in cashing out stolen funds.
The grouping is named after the virus that hackers introduced into computer networks in order to gain access to the computers of management and accountants of organizations. If detected, the virus self-destructs. For the first time, the group was spotted by specialists from the Computer Incident Investigation Department of Kaspersky Lab.
Within a few years, as the investigation established, hackers stole 1.26 billion rubles.
In addition, they hacked into the database of the Yekaterinburg Koltsovo airport (part of the Airports of the Regions holding).
None of the accused pleaded guilty. Almost everyone, including Konstantin Kozlovsky, intends to appeal the verdict. “The investigation did not provide any objective evidence of the guilt of the defendants. The defendants did not even know each other. Moreover, during the trial in the case concerning crimes in the field of computer information, not a single electronic evidence, not a single electronic computing device was examined, ”Fyodor Akchermyshev, Mr. Kozlovsky’s lawyer, noted in an interview with Kommersant-Ural.
The defendants have repeatedly stated that the case was fabricated and that the FSB was involved in this. In 2019, Konstantin Kozlovsky said in court that he “worked with the FSB” when creating the virus. He petitioned for a trial involving former FSB major Dmitry Dokuchaev and Kaspersky Lab employee Ruslan Stoyanov (convicted to long terms for treason), because “they could give evidence that would release all the defendants from arrest.”
At the end of 2021, Mr. Kozlovsky’s defense told the court that a criminal case could have been initiated to cover up the illegal operational actions of the FSB on the territory of five European countries.
Ms. Ryakina’s lawyer Sergei Obvintsev noted that his client has not yet decided whether to appeal the verdict.
“Probably, we will file an appeal, but not a fact. She completely denies her guilt. Indeed, she was withdrawing money from ATMs, but she did not even know that she was doing this for some group of hackers,” said Mr. Obvintsev.
According to the lawyer, the woman also withdrew personal funds, and the investigation included these operations in the case. There is no evidence that Ryakina did something intentionally. “No invoices or card numbers were provided,” the lawyer said.
The press service of the prosecutor’s office of the Sverdlovsk region told Kommersant-Ural that the decision to appeal the verdict would be made within 10 days after reading the text of the court decision.