RFE/RL reports:
The United States has extradited to Russia a Russian national sentenced to nine years in prison for cybercrimes, the Russian news agency RIA cited Russia’s Interior Ministry as saying on September 28.
Aleksei Burkov was sentenced in June last year by a U.S. district court in Virginia for operating two websites that sold stolen, mostly U.S. payment-card numbers and mediated sales of stolen data and the hiring of people for illegal activities.
Read more on Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
Burkov may have been extradited to Russia because he had already served a number of years of his sentence when the time he was held in Israel and then awaiting trial here was added in to the calculations. (see UPDATE below)
A machine translation of the Russian article makes it sound like he will still be facing charges in Russia:
“The officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation at the Sheremetyevo airport and the Interpol National Central Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia detained a Russian citizen, deported from the United States, Alexei Burkov . He is accused of involvement in the manufacture and sale of counterfeit bank cards and trade in confidential data of clients of financial institutions,” Volk said.
Burkov had been charged in Russia with unlawful acts that were allegedly committed from 2008 to 2015. He was reportedly charged in absentia in 2017 “under articles of theft, illegal obtaining of information constituting commercial, tax or banking secrets, illegal circulation of payment means, creation and distribution of malware.”
Update: Radio Free Europe subsequently updated their report with more information that makes it sound like this is not just a case of time served being credited.
One Sept 2021 story included “…release by offering an exchange for Naama Issachar, an Israeli woman who received a seven-year prison sentence in Moscow on marijuana charges. She was released after being pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin roughly a week after Burkov pleaded guilty in the U.S.”
but a one year gap does not sound like a exchange for the Israeli woman, hence something else must be in play here.
I’m upset that the $20 million was not recovered.