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 Vladimir Drinkman, 34, was accused of conspiring with at least four
other men to install "sniffers" to comb through computer networks of
financial companies, payment processors and retailers around the
world, and then to store and eventually sell data they collected.
These attacks led to the theft of more than 160 million credit card
numbers, and hundreds of millions of dollars from companies and
customers, in a scheme dating from 2005, the Justice Department
said.
Sixteen companies' networks were infiltrated, including those of
Nasdaq OMX Group Inc, 7-Eleven, France's Carrefour SA, JC Penney Co,
JetBlue Airways Corp, a Visa Inc licensee, and Heartland Payment
Systems Inc, authorities said.
Drinkman, of Moscow and Syktyvkar, Russia, was charged with 11
counts of wire fraud, unauthorized access to computers and
conspiracy.
He entered his not guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge James
Clark in Newark, New Jersey. A trial is scheduled for April 27.
Drinkman was detained after his plea, and faces up to 30 years in
prison the most serious counts.
Florian Miedel, a lawyer for Drinkman, did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.
The defendant had been fighting extradition since his June 28, 2012
arrest in the Netherlands.
"Drinkman's extradition on the indictment this office brought more
than a year and a half ago shows how relentlessly we will pursue
those who are charged with these serious crimes," said U.S. Attorney
Paul Fishman in New Jersey.
Another Russian man implicated in the scheme, Dmitriy Smilianets,
31, was extradited to the United States from the Netherlands in
September 2012 and remains in custody.
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The other defendants - Alexandr Kalinin, 28, of St. Petersburg,
Russia; Roman Kotov, 33, of Moscow; and Mikhail Rytikov, 27, of
Odessa, Ukraine - remain at large.
Drinkman and Kalinin had previously been charged as "Hacker 1" and
"Hacker 2" in a 2009 indictment accusing Albert Gonzalez of Miami
over his involvement in five corporate data breaches, including at
Heartland.
U.S. prosecutors publicly released their names in July 2013, in what
law enforcement authorities at the time said amounted to criticism
of uncooperative Russian authorities.
Gonzalez is now serving a 20-year federal prison term.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)
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