Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Timur Gerassimenko, 35, to a four year sentence while his partners in crime, Dmitiri Jegorov, 37, and Konstantin Poltev, 31 were sentenced to 44 months and 40 months imprisonment respectively. The three cyber criminals were part of a larger 7 member gang based in Eastern Europe. They used a malware to infect more than 4 million PC around the world, 500,000 of them in the US, including some belonging to NASA and other US agencies. Once they had infected the computers, the malware would then let the cyber gang hijack net sessions. Hijacking the browsers, they would re-route the target computers to websites containing ads through which they earned $14 million in the years of their operation. They used their illicit proceeds to launder money through numerous companies including one Estonian firm called Rove Digital. The malware designed by the cyber gang evaded detection and prevented installation of antivirus software programs, updates as well as operating system updates opening them up for further exploits. Apart from the three above, another Estonian member of the gang, Vladimir Tsastsin entered into a guilty plea with the prosecution and will be sentenced later this month. While Valeri Aleksejev was sentenced to 48 months in prison and Anton Ivanov pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to time served. One member of the gang who is a Russian by origin is still at large.
