At trial, prosecutors successfully argued that Mr. Seleznev had run one of the largest credit card<br />and online identity theft rings, under various aliases, including Track2, 2pac and nCuX — derived from the Russian word for “psycho.”<br />Given the large number of victims and financial losses, federal sentencing guidelines indicated<br />that Mr. Seleznev should be given a life sentence, but prosecutors recommended the 30-year sentence.<br />On Friday, a judge sentenced Roman Valerevich Seleznev, 32, to 27 years in prison — the longest sentence handed down for hacking-related charges in the United States — for running a huge credit card<br />and identity theft operation from his various homes in Bali, Indonesia, and Vladivostok, Russia, and for selling millions of credit card numbers on the black market.<br />But in a rare, major victory in Federal District Court in Seattle, the Justice Department netted<br />a big player in a Russian digital crime ring who is the son of a prominent Russian lawmaker.<br />The elder Mr. Seleznev has accused the United States of “kidnapping” his son, and he told a Russian news outlet<br />that the charges against him were a “monstrous lie.” The Foreign Affairs Ministry of Russia has lashed out at Maldivian authorities for cooperating with the United States in what it, too, has described as a “kidnapping.”<br />Valery Seleznev’s office in the Russian Parliament did not respond to a written request for comment sent Friday.<br />“This is a huge success in that there are significant challenges to indicting Russian cybercriminals,” said Levi Gundert,<br />a former Secret Service agent who now works as vice president of intelligence at Recorded Future, a cybersecurity firm.
