Redazione RHC : 26 June 2025 09:05
Do you remember the infamous REvil cyber gang? The Russian hacker group responsible for some of the most devastating ransomware attacks in the early days of this global threat, known for posting their criminal exploits on the popular underground forum “Happy Blog”.
The Dzerzhinsky Court in St. Petersburg has convicted four more participants in the REvil (aka Sodinokibi) hacking group case, according to media reports. All those convicted were given actual prison sentences, but the defendants were released, having already served their full sentences in pre-trial detention, during the investigation and trial.
REvil’s activities ceased in January 2022, after the FSB announced the arrest of 14 people associated with the group and carried out searches at 25 addresses in the Moscow, St. Petersburg, Leningrad and Lipetsk regions. At the time, it was reported that “the basis for the search activities was an appeal from the relevant US authorities.” As a result, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow ordered the pre-trial detention of eight alleged members of the hacker group. They were charged with acquiring and storing electronic means intended for the illegal transfer of funds by an organized group(Part 2 of Article 187 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
However, the investigation managed to indict the eight alleged perpetrators only for two remote thefts of money, committed in the United States, without anyone knowing from whom, where and for what amount. The media reported that there were no victims or damages in the criminal case. In May 2022, it became known that the American authorities had refused to cooperate further with Russia. As a result, the suspects could only be charged with fraud involving the credit cards of two Mexicans living in the United States.
As a result, the case against the hacker group has essentially come to a standstill. In the final version of the case, all the defendants were charged with24 counts of “manufacturing and selling counterfeit credit or debit cards” (Article 187 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and the alleged leader of the group, Daniil Puzyrevsky, a resident of St. Petersburg, was also indicted under Article 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which provides for liability for“creating or using computer programs to destroy or block computer information, as well as for neutralizing the means of protecting it.”
The fact is that one of the programs found on the defendants’ laptops was found to be malicious following the expert examination ordered by the investigation. In fact, the investigation established that the defendants had not committed any crimes in Russia, and the State Department never provided the promised evidence of their possible involvement in financial scams in the United States.
Thus, according to the investigation, the victims of REvil were two US citizens of Mexican origin, a certain Otilia Pevez and a certain Otilia Sisniega Pevez. The defendants allegedly stole a certain amount of money from their credit cards remotely, spending it on purchasing goods in online stores. However, these women were not found. As a result, the alleged participants of REvil could only be charged with illegal use of credit cards and storing malware. It was also not possible to determine the origin of the cash seized from the defendants (426 million rubles, $600,000 or €500,000), and the experts did not even undertake to evaluate the cryptocurrency in their possession.
In the fall of 2024, the court found Artem Zayets, Aleksey Malozemov, Daniil Puzyrevsky and Ruslan Khansvyarov guilty of illegal circulation of payment instruments (Part 2 of Article 187 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Puzyrevsky and Khansvyarov were also found guilty of the aforementioned use and distribution of malware (Part 2 of Article 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
As a result, Zayets and Malozemov were sentenced to 4.5 and 5 years in a general-regime penal colony, while Khansvyarov and Puzyrevsky received 5.5 and 6 years, respectively. As reported this week, the court found all four guilty of multiple crimes. As a result, Bessonov, Golovachuk, Muromskoy and Korotayev were sentenced to five years in a general-regime penal colony. Before the verdict came into force, the pretrial detention order for the defendants was transformed into a written commitment not to leave the country.
The court also ordered the confiscation of two 2020 BMWs from Bessonov, worth 51.8 million rubles and 497 thousand dollars, and a 2019 Mercedes Benz C 200 from Korotaev. At the same time, the joint press service of the city courts reports on its Telegram channel that all four were released from pretrial detention in court, as they had already served their sentences in a pre-trial detention center, at the stage of investigation and trial. After all, one day of arrest is equivalent to a day and a half in a penal colony.
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