Estonia, Financial Services, Legislation, Technology, USA

The court sentenced Timur Gerassimenko (35) with four years, Dmitry Jegorov (37) and Konstantin Poltev (31), with a little more than three years of prison for with Internet fraud, which was committed during the period 2007-2011.

The court ordered Gerassimenko to pay 2.5 million US dollars, and Jegorov and Poltev a million dollars each.

Vladimirt Chashchyn (35), who is considered to be the author of the criminal scheme that made over four million computers in 100 countries collect money for the group pleaded guilty in early July in Manhattan federal court. His sentence will be declared on October 14, as he is accused of conspiring to penetrate into computers and conspiracy to commit Internet fraud. He can face an up to 25-year prison sentence.

Chashchyn organised, from 2006 to November 2011, development, spreading and administering of malware called DNS Changer, which infected at least four million computers in around a hundred different countries. The malware enabled to control the Internet settings of infected computers, to redirect users to designated sites and addresses, or prevent visiting certain Web sites. By controlling the infected computers' Internet traffic, the operators of the malware could redirect computer users to click on assigned ads, for which money was received from internet advertising companies.

As the result of committing the crimes, assets were received from Internet advertising intermediaries of no less than 21.9 million US dollars and 234,000 euros. The Estonian and U.S. authorities detained the criminal group on November 8, 2011.