The well-known Russian hacker Roman Seleznev, alias Track2, has been sentenced to 27 years in prison in the United States, the largest sentence issued to date against a cybercriminal charged with theft.
And it is that until relatively recently the justice system did not have guidelines to act against cybercriminals and convict them.
However, little by little the laws have been updated and adapted to the new internet crimes and the sentences are becoming harsher.
Seleznev was arrested in 2014 the Maldives with a computer that contained the stolen data of more than 1,7 million credit cards. American justice accuses this man, who operated under the pseudonym Track2., to steal from more than 3.700 companies an approximate value of 169 million dollars.
Some of these companies, like Broadway Grill, had to close because they could not bear the losses from the hacking. Like this, the judge considers proven 38 crimes that include online fraud, intentional damage to protected computers, and identity theft, among others. These charges imply 27 years in prison, the highest sentence for a cybercriminal in history.
In a letter published in The New York Times, Seleznev blames his actions on his tough childhood —his mother died when he was 17 years old from an alcohol poisoning— and on a terrorist attack he suffered in Morocco, that kept him in bed for a year and ended with his wife's divorce. En la misma carta Seleznev se confiesa arrepentido de su actos y asegura que su deseo es corregir el mal que ha hecho y comportarse “correctamente”.
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