A 51-year-old dual Russian and Israeli National, who is accused as the developer of the lockbit ransomware group, has been extradited in the United States, almost three months later he was formally charged in relation to the e-Aradha Yojana.
Rostislav Pannev The first was arrested in Israel in August 2024. He is said to have been working as a developer for the Rainmware Gang from 2019 to February 2024, when the online infrastructure of the operation was confiscated in law enforcement practice.
The United States Attorney John Giordano said, “The extradition of Rostislav Panev in the district of New Jersey explains: If you are a member of the lockbit ransomware conspiracy, the United States will find you and to get you justice,” said the United States Attorney John Giyordano.
Lockbit became one of the most vast ranges groups, attacking more than 2,500 institutions in at least 120 countries around the world. About 1,800 of them were located in the United States.
The victims included individuals and small businesses for multinational corporations including hospitals, schools, non-profit organizations, important infrastructure and government and law-enforcement agencies.
Illegal profits in the cybercrime race of syndicate have earned at least $ 500 million, making the victims to billions of dollars in the form of lost revenue and cost from the reaction and recovery of the event.
Panev was responsible for designing and maintaining the locker’s codebase, in his role as a developer of the lockbit, earning approximately $ 230,000 between June 2022 and February 2024.
The Department of Justice said, “The development of the code to disable the antivirus software amidst the work accepted to complete the lockbit group; to deploy malware at several computers attached to a afflicted network; and all the printers associated with a afflicted network to print the lockbit ransom note to all the printers associated with the network,” the Department of Justice said.
“Panev also accepted the lockbit malware code to maintain and maintain and provide technical guidance to the lockbit group.”
In addition to Panev, six other lockbit members, Mikhail Vasiliv, Ruslan Estamirov, Artur Sungatov, Ivan Ganadivich Kondratival, Mikhail Pavlovich Mataveave, and Dimitry Yurivich Khorosev have also been charged.
In addition, Khuroshev, Matavev, Sugatov, and Kondratyeve have been approved by the Department of Foreign Property Control (OFAC) of the Treasury’s office for their roles in starting cyber attacks.
