US authorities have sentenced a Ukrainian man to 87 months in prison after he pled guilty to wire fraud and participation in a scheme to launder funds for Eastern European cybercriminals. The authorities have further ordered the convict to pay $98,751.64 in restitution.
Between 2009-12, the convict Aleksandr Musienko partnered with Eastern European cyber criminals to steal and launder over $3 million from the overseas bank accounts of US-based victims. Musienko’s co-conspirators hacked and stole victim data and used it to impersonate the victims. They successfully deceived the victims’ banks by making them believe that withdrawals from the victims’ accounts were indeed requested by the victims. This allowed Musienko and partners to steal large sums of money from the victims’ accounts.
Musienko created and supervised a network of US-based ‘money mules’ to transmit the stolen funds overseas. Musienko recruited the ‘mules’ by false and misleading advertising on employment websites. The unsuspecting mules were then directed to assist clients in overseas transmission of funds. In 2011, Musienko’s partners fraudulently transferred $296,278 from a North Carolina-based company to bank accounts controlled by the mules. Musienko asked the mules to wire the funds to various European bank accounts. Fortunately, the company’s bank identified the fraud and deducted $197,526.36 before it was wired overseas.
Source: US Department of Justice