Court softened punishment of LURK hackers leader

The Sverdlovsk Regional Court softened the verdict to the leader of the LURK hacker group Konstantin Kozlovsky and reduced him for eight months. This was reported by TASS, citing lawyer Fedor Akcherymyshev.

The court of first instance Konstantin Kozlovsky was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The appeal decided to soften the verdict. As a result, Kozlovsky was sentenced to imprisonment for a period of 13 years 4 months in a maximum security colony, followed by restriction of freedom for 1 year.

As the lawyer explained, the verdict was softened in connection with the release from the punishment under Art. 273 and 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Creation, use and distribution of harmful computer programs”, “Unlawful access to computer information”) due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

from punishment under Art. 273 and 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, another 18 people were released, in addition to the LURK leader, the press service of the regional court said. All of them were reduced by punishment. In addition, the court abolished the arrest imposed on Kozlovsky’s apartment.

At the same time, as the lawyer noted, the state prosecution asked for the appeal instance to increase the sentence to 18 years.

The lawyer also indicated that the prosecutor did not provide evidence of Kozlovsky’s involvement in the charges. He explained that in the case of crimes in the field of computer information using computer programs “there was not a single material evidence, not a single electronic device, not a single computer.”

Recall that Konstantin Kozlovsky was recognized as the head of the hackers group. 22 members of the group, most of which Yekaterinburgers are found guilty of creating the Lurk virus, which replaced the recipient’s details in accounting documents. Further stolen money came to the accounts of one-day firms under the control of the groups, from where they were distributed according to the accounts of dummy individuals throughout Russia and cashed out.

/Media reports cited above.