(RightIsRight.co) – The US has been cracking down on cybercriminals and hackers who have increasingly wreaked havoc on American companies and their data in the past few years. One such bad actor is Russian Alexei Burkov, whom Israel arrested in 2015 and extradited to the US in 2019. However, the hacker is now back in Russian hands.
On Tuesday, September 28, Reuters reported that Russian police detained Burkov at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, Russia. However, the cybercriminal served only one of the nine years of jail time he was sentenced to after a US federal court convicted him in January 2020 of facilitating credit card fraud, hacking and money laundering.
Sky News technology reporter Alexander Martin shared more about Burkov’s case:
New: Alexei Burkov, the cybercriminal who operated the Cardplanet forum, has been deported from the US to Russia one year into his nine year sentence. Follows extensive efforts by Russia to prevent him being extradited from Israel to US in the first place.https://t.co/Q7IXB4LWgj
— Alexander Martin (@AlexMartin) September 28, 2021
The US Justice Department and the US embassy in Moscow have yet to comment on the details behind Burkov’s deportation. Currently, the US and Russia do not have an extradition treaty, meaning prisoner swaps or returns like this are few and far between. Hopefully, President Joe Biden will explain to the American public just why he let such a convicted hacker return home without fully serving his sentence in the United States.
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