The Lurk hacker group members were sentenced by the Kirovsky District Court of Yekaterinburg for stealing about 1.2 billion rubles from companies and banks.
The defendants received prison sentences ranging from five to fourteen years. Konstantin Kozlovsky, the leader, received the longest sentence. The convicts, who have not admitted their guilt, plan to appeal the verdict.
The trial of the Lurk group started in May 2019 and lasted about three years due to the large volume of materials, including 2.5 thousand volumes in the file. The coronavirus pandemic also caused frequent postponement of meetings.
The Kirovsky District Court of Yekaterinburg began announcing the verdict on February 8, 2022, and concluded on February 14.
A total of 23 defendants are involved in the Lurk case, with one, Igor Makovkin, sentenced to five years in prison after entering into a pre-trial agreement in 2018. The alleged organizer of the group, Vladimir Gritsan, is currently on the wanted list.
The defendants were charged with leadership of a criminal community, participation in a criminal community, fraud in the field of computer information on an especially large scale, illegal access to computer information, and creation, use, and distribution of malicious computer programs.
The group members received prison sentences ranging from 5 years 1 month to 14 years, while the state prosecution requested from 6 to 18 years in prison for the accused.
The leader of the group, Konstantin Kozlovsky, received the longest sentence. Three convicts will serve their sentences in a strict regime colony, while the rest will serve in a general one. The defendant Valentina Ryakina was granted a reprieve from serving her sentence until her child turns 14 years old. The verdict has not yet entered into force and can be appealed to the Sverdlovsk Regional Court.
Lurk participants were detained at the end of May 2016 in 15 regions of Russia. The group was allegedly created in 2013 and had a clear hierarchy. Members used pseudonyms to communicate and were involved in developing and testing malware, as well as cashing out stolen funds.
The group is named after the virus they introduced into computer networks to gain access to the computers of management and accountants of organizations. The virus self-destructs if detected. The group was first discovered by specialists from the Computer Incident Investigation Department of Kaspersky Lab.
Over the course of a few years, as the investigation found, hackers stole 1.26 billion rubles.
In addition, they hacked into the database of the Yekaterinburg Koltsovo airport (part of the Airports of the Regions holding).
None of the accused pleaded guilty. Almost everyone, including Konstantin Kozlovsky, intends to appeal the verdict. “The investigation did not provide any objective evidence of the guilt of the defendants. The defendants did not even know each other. Moreover, during the trial in the case concerning crimes in the field of computer information, not a single electronic evidence, not a single electronic computing device was examined, ”Fyodor Akchermyshev, Mr. Kozlovsky’s lawyer, noted in an interview with Kommersant-Ural.
The defendants have repeatedly stated that the case was fabricated and that the FSB was involved in this. In 2019, Konstantin Kozlovsky said in court that he “worked with the FSB” when creating the virus. He petitioned for a trial involving former FSB major Dmitry Dokuchaev and Kaspersky Lab employee Ruslan Stoyanov (convicted to long terms for treason), because “they could give evidence that would release all the defendants from arrest.”
At the end of 2021, Mr. Kozlovsky’s defense told the court that a criminal case could have been initiated to cover up the illegal operational actions of the FSB on the territory of five European countries.
Ms. Ryakina’s lawyer Sergei Obvintsev noted that his client has not yet decided whether to appeal the verdict.
“Probably, we will file an appeal, but not a fact. She completely denies her guilt. Indeed, she was withdrawing money from ATMs, but she did not even know that she was doing this for some group of hackers,” said Mr. Obvintsev.
According to the lawyer, the woman also withdrew personal funds, and the investigation included these operations in the case. There is no evidence that Ryakina did something intentionally. “No invoices or card numbers were provided,” the lawyer said.
The press service of the prosecutor’s office of the Sverdlovsk region told Kommersant-Ural that the decision to appeal the verdict would be made within 10 days after reading the text of the court decision.
