The US and UK recently sanctioned seven Russians, including Vitaly Kovalev, who was a high-ranking figure in the Trickbot hacker group.

Vitaly Kovalev is also known under the network aliases “Bentley” and “Ben”. According to the indictment, Kovalev is charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud and eight counts of bank fraud in connection with a series of intrusions into victims’ bank accounts at various U.S. financial institutions that occurred in 2009 and 2010, prior to his involvement in the Dyre and Trickbot group. group.

What is known in the US as Trickbot is the Russian hacker group Conti. Its leaders were investigated on the territory of the Russian Federation, and Vitaly Kovalev was even detained in 2016 as part of a case initiated under article 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, part 2 (creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs). However, in a surprising way, he was released on bail, and then this case was completely “hushed up”.

It is extremely interesting why Bentley was shown such humanism, while the leaders of other hacker groups are now in custody, for example, Flint’s groups and The Infraud Organization.