A Ukrainian extradited from the Czech Republic faces charges that he was part of a multinational conspiracy of hackers who stole millions of dollars from an Atlanta payment processor in 2008.
Evgeny Tarasovich Levitskyy was arraigned Aug. 5 in the U.S. Magistrate’s Court in Atlanta on four charges of conspiracy and bank and wire fraud. He faces up to 30 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million per charge if convicted.
He pleaded innocent and was ordered held in custody pending trial, according to court records.
“Our pursuit of the perpetrators of this international scheme has continued for over seven years and demonstrates that we will persevere in seeking justice for international cyber- criminals for as long as it takes,” U.S. Attorney John Horn said in a press release.
According to FBI and Secret Service investigators, the 31-year-old-man, also know as Vinch, Vinchenko, and M.U.R.D.E.R.E.R., was a leader in a team of more than a dozen conspirators from Russia, Estonia, Ukraine, Nigeria, the United States and Israel. To date, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta has charged 14 people in the case.
In 2008, the team hacked into RBS Worldpay, then an Atlanta unit of Royal Bank of Scotland. The unit handled payroll debit cards that allowed workers to collect pay at ATM machines, according to investigators.
The British company was bought by Bain Capital and another private equity firm in 2010 and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2015. Now called Worldpay, it has about 700 people in Atlanta, its largest U.S. operation, according to its website.
The hackers broke into a number of accounts, investigators said. After raising the account limits to $1 million each, the team distributed 44 counterfeit debit cards to a network of cashers. Within less than 12 hours, the cashers withdrew over $9 million from more than 2,000 ATMs in a whirlwind sweep through 280 cities in the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Estonia, Hong Kong, Canada and Japan.
Using one debit card, Levitskyy allegedly cashed out nearly $500,000.
The cashers allegedly got to keep 30 percent to 50 percent of their withdrawals, forwarding the rest to the central team of hackers who monitored their withdrawals live via their hacked access to RBS Worldpay’s system.
In 2014, one of those hackers, Sergei Nicolaevich Tsurikov, of Estonia, was extradited from Estonia and sentenced to 11 years in prison and to pay $8.4 million in restitution for his role in the conspiracy.
Two Russian nationals involved in the conspiracy were convicted in Russia about six years ago, but received suspended sentences. They also face charges in the United States.
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