Latest coverage for Extradition

A 23-year-old Scottish man thought to be a member of the prolific Scattered Spider cybercrime group was extradited last week from Spain to the United States, where he is facing charges of wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. U.S. prosecutors allege Tyler Robert Buchanan and co-conspirators hacked into dozens of companies in the United States and abroad, and that he personally controlled more than $26 million stolen from victims.

A U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty last week to leaking phone records for high-ranking U.S. government officials searched online for non-extradition countries and for an answer to the question "can hacking be treason?" prosecutors in the case said Wednesday. The government disclosed the details in a court motion to keep the defendant in custody until he is discharged from the military.

Nikita Kislitsin, formerly the head of network security for one of Russia's top cybersecurity firms, was arrested last week in Kazakhstan in response to 10-year-old hacking charges from the U.S. Department of Justice. Experts say Kislitsin's prosecution could soon put the Kazakhstan government in a sticky diplomatic position, as the Kremlin is already signaling that it intends to block his extradition to the United States.

Denis Emelyantsev, a 36-year-old Russian man accused of running a massive botnet called RSOCKS that stitched malware into millions of devices worldwide, pleaded guilty to two counts of computer crime violations in a California courtroom this week. The plea comes just months after Emelyantsev was extradited from Bulgaria, where he told investigators, “America is looking for me because I have enormous information and they need it.”

A 26-year-old Ukrainian man is awaiting extradition to the United States on charges that he acted as a core developer for Raccoon, a "malware-as-a-service" offering that helped paying customers steal passwords and financial data from millions of cybercrime victims. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the defendant was busted in March 2022, after fleeing mandatory military service in Ukraine in the weeks following the Russian invasion.

A 36-year-old Russian man recently identified by KrebsOnSecurity as the likely proprietor of the massive RSOCKS botnet has been arrested in Bulgaria at the request of U.S. authorities. At a court hearing in Bulgaria this month, the accused hacker requested and was granted extradition to the United States, reportedly telling the judge, "America is looking for me because I have enormous information and they need it."

Aleksei Burkov, a cybercriminal who long operated two of Russia's most exclusive underground hacking forums, was arrested in 2015 by Israeli authorities. The Russian government fought Burkov's extradition to the U.S. for four years -- even arresting and jailing an Israeli woman to force a prisoner swap. That effort failed: Burkov was sent to America, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to nine years in prison. But a little more than a year later, he was quietly released and deported back to Russia. Now some Republican lawmakers are asking why a Russian hacker once described as "an asset of supreme importance" was allowed to shorten his stay.