Redazione RHC : 18 October 2025 21:53
In the collective imagination, the word “hacker” or “computer criminal” is a young man with enormous computer skills, but history has taught us that in a few rare cases this is not the case at all.
Among the female black hackers, Kristina Svechinskaya, of Russian origin, born on February 16, 1989, certainly stands out. At the age of 21, she was able to steal 3 million dollars from American bank accounts.
Fluent in English, Kristina studied at Stavropol State University (a Russian academic educational institution located in Stavropol).
After his father’s death, his family’s conditions began to become precarious, as their livelihood depended on a salary of 12,000 rubles (400 dollars at the time).
In her third year of college, Kristina chose the Work & Travel program and in the summer of 2010 arrived in Massachusetts, USA, where she started working in a fast food restaurant.
His income was low and he was having trouble paying his rent, so he moved to New York to start his career as a black hat hacker and, according to the New York Post, began joining a criminal hacking ring that included several ” college students” in the United States who were on student visas in the country.
Svechinskaya was offered an 8-10% cut of the money for the wire fraud she committed, and then began carrying out cyber attacks and bank fraud.
In early October 2009, Kristina and several other Russian students were arrested on charges of committing bank fraud. According to the investigation, Kristina had hacked at least five American bank accounts, from which the hackers transferred money.
She was later convicted, but Svechinskaya signed a $25,000 bond, according to a court order, according to a file held by the Russian Agency for Legal Affairs and Judicial Information.
The court ruled that the 21-year-old Russian woman should be placed under supervision, banning her from traveling outside the Southern and Eastern boroughs of New York, in June 2011.
On September 30, 2010, representatives of the United States Attorney’s Office and the FBI announced the discovery of a criminal network involving individuals from several countries, primarily Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, as well as Kazakhstan and Russia.
Charges were then filed against 25 Russian citizens, including Kristina Svechinskaya. Most of the defendants were young people between the ages of 20 and 26 who entered the United States on student visas, all suspected of involvement in the theft of funds such as U.S. bank accounts.
According to previously released data from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Svechinskaya was part of a group of so-called “money mules” who transferred money using a virus called “Zeus-Trojan” and also transferred money abroad.
The group consisted of more than ten people, including Svechinskaya, who opened at least five fictitious accounts for various people at Bank of America and Wachovia.
Kristina Svechinskaya subsequently stood trial. When the case documents were read, she burst into tears and confessed to her wrongdoing, even though it was reported she faced up to 40 years in prison.
According to authorities, Svechinskaya compromised at least five accounts at Bank of America and Wachovia, under the alleged names of Anastasia Opokina and Svetlana Makarova. More than $35,000 stolen from her victims was subsequently transferred to these accounts.
In 2016, Svechinskaya created a YouTube presentation of SmartFlash, marketed as a secure, cloud-based USB flash drive for storing unlimited data.