The U.S. Department of justice accused seven employees of the GRU of the Russian Federation in cyber attacks and other illegal actions using the cryptocurrency, according to the website of the Ministry.
Employees of the main intelligence Agency of Russia are charged with the theft of personal information and its publication with the aim of influencing public opinion. This also applies to the doping scandal — the US authorities are convinced that the GRU attacks on the World anti-doping Agency, international court of arbitration and anti-Doping Agency of the United States.
The document contains the following names of accused: Alexey Morenets, Evgeny Serebryakov Ivan Ermakov, Artem Malyshev, Dmitry badin, Oleg Sotnikov Alexey Minin.
While badin, Malyshev and Andrey Ermakov was among the 12 employees of the GRU, which in July, the US accused of meddling in presidential elections. In addition, in October, Dutch authorities reported that Morenets, Serebryakov, Igor Minin was in April, expelled from the country on suspicion of planning a hacker attack on the headquarters of the Organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons (OPCW).
The US authorities are sure that to conceal financial transactions, the defendants used the cryptocurrency.
“When members of the criminal conspiracy was required to purchase the items of the hacking of infrastructure, payments were made through a complex network of transactions where were used the accounts with fictitious names. Also used cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, to further obscure your identity and traces of the actions”, — stated in the document of the Ministry of justice.
In the text of the document States that the defendants used various Fiat currencies including the US dollar. Bitcoin was used, as a rule, buying servers and domain registration.
Many payments went to the American company directly to avoid interaction with traditional financial institutions and, consequently, the identification and clarification of sources of funds.
We will remind, earlier ForkLog published an article about the impact of American sanctions on the Russian economy and the demand of its residents for bitcoin.
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