Estonian sentenced for involvement in multi-million dollar ransomware attacks

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that Estonian national Maksim Berezan has been sentenced to five-and-a-half years imprisonment following his involvement in 13 or more ransomware attacks, seven of which were aimed at U.S. businesses and resulting in losses exceeding $53 million, reports ZDNet. Extradited to the U.S. following his arrest in Latvia in November 2020, Berezan, who was a member of a Russian-speaking cybercrime forum, entered a guilty plea to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud against a financial organization as well as conspiracy to commit access device fraud and computer compromises in April 2021, according to the Justice Department. Police have also found $11 million in ransom payments in the cryptocurrency wallets he had used in the attacks. The conviction was also done in collaboration with the Latvian State Police and Estonian Police. "Cybercrime has become increasingly more sophisticated, but so have our methods for combatting it. Ransomware attacks are devastating to people and organizations alike, and we have honed our strategies and techniques to target both the individual actors who perpetrate these attacks and the networks that support them," said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Jessica Aber.