“As alleged, Silnikau, Kadariya, Tarasov, and conspirators used multiple strategies to profit from their widespread hacking and wire fraud,” stated the US Department of Justice in documents released after Silnikau’s extradition from Poland in August 2024. Tarasov, 33, known in cybercriminal circles by the aliases “Aels” and, more recently, “Lavander,” was arrested in Berlin on July 18, 2023, as part of a coordinated international operation that also captured his alleged accomplice Maksim Silnikau in Spain. According to US indictments, Tarasov, Silnikau, and Volodymyr Kadariya allegedly orchestrated a sophisticated “malvertising” operation between 2013 and 2022 that infected millions of computers worldwide. In a significant setback for US cybercrime enforcement efforts, Russian hacker Andrei Tarasov has evaded extradition to the United States and successfully returned to his homeland, intelligence sources confirm. Tarasov remains on the US Secret Service’s Most Wanted list, and authorities are offering substantial rewards for information leading to the capture of individuals involved in these cybercrime networks. In past forum posts, he harshly criticized the Russian government, once writing: “Nothing is left from the ‘great’ country I grew up in except for a bunch of clowns and the battle against America”. In a recent forum post, he cryptically mentioned: “Over the following nine months I learned that there were places no better than prison, but that’s a whole ‘nother story”. However, in a surprising development, the Higher Regional Court of Berlin ordered Tarasov’s release in January 2024 after determining the US charges were insufficiently concrete to warrant extradition.
This Cyber News was published on cybersecuritynews.com. Publication date: Fri, 16 May 2025 13:50:23 +0000