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Credit to Author: Garrett M. Graff| Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 22:23:49 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n The repercussions over custody and extradition of Aleksei Burkov have set off a geopolitical maelstrom.<\/p>\n The least interesting thing about the alleged Russian hacker who appeared Tuesday morning in a Virginia courtroom may end up being the charges he faces there. The Justice Department indicted Aleksei Yurievich Burkov on five counts related to his alleged role from from 2009 to 2013 running an online criminal marketplace, known as CardPlanet, that sold stolen credit card numbers. The scale of CardPlanet, as online forums go, was relatively small\u2014150,000 stolen payment cards that resulted in about $20 million in fraudulent purchases, a far cry from the bust last year of the reportedly $530 million \u201cIn Fraud We Trust<\/a>\u201d marketplace.<\/p>\n You can read the 2016 Burkov indictment in full below. Unsealed Tuesday, it alleges that the 29-year-old former St. Petersburg resident used both CardPlanet and another online forum to commit financial fraud, and outlines how much cybercrime now resembles legitimate online businesses and shopping sites. Burkov, the indictment alleges, sold card details for between $2.50 and $10 a card, and even offered a literal money-back guarantee: He would refund the price of any cards that proved invalid. He also offered a special fee-based service, known as \u201cchecker,\u201d that let would-be criminals instantly validate stolen card data. To keep out law enforcement, every prospective member of Burkov\u2019s forum had to be \u201cvouched for\u201d by three existing members.<\/p>\n What separates Burkov\u2019s case from run-of-the-mill online financial fraud, though, is the geopolitics that have unfolded since he was originally arrested in Israel nearly four years ago. Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia, which in recent years has become ground zero<\/a> for harboring cybercriminals, has begun aggressively fighting to protect hackers that get caught overseas.<\/p>\n At the request of the US Justice Department and the Secret Service\u2014which had been chasing CardPlanet\u2019s owner\u2014Israel originally arrested Burkov when he was vacationing in Israel with his girlfriend in late 2015. It was an early catch in what has become a rising<\/a> trend<\/a> of Russian<\/a> hackers<\/a> caught while traveling outside Russia, often on vacation with girlfriends. (Most recently, in a case that still has US officials scratching their heads, one of the Internet Research Agency employees indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller<\/a> for interfering in the 2016 presidential election was actually arrested<\/a> in Belarus\u2014not typically a country friendly to Western law enforcement\u2014but then released and returned to Russia.)<\/p>\n As the US began to push for Burkov\u2019s extradition through the Israeli legal system, Russia promptly stepped in and filed its own competing extradition request, saying that Burkov was actually wanted back home for internet fraud as well\u2014a Russian tactic that has become commonplace<\/a> in recent years. (The ploy even works<\/a> sometimes; last year a Greek court sent an alleged Russian hacker arrested there back to Russia instead of the US.) It took until 2017 for an Israeli district judge to rule that Burkov should be sent to the US to face trial, but Burkov appealed. It was only this summer that the Israeli Supreme Court finally upheld the earlier ruling.<\/p>\n As Burkov\u2019s case dragged on, Russia moved to make Israel think twice about handing him over to the US. In April, Russia arrested a 26-year-old Israeli woman, Naama Issachar, as she was changing planes in Russia en route to Israel from a yoga retreat in India. Issachar, who grew up in New Jersey and moved to Israel at 16, was detained after Russian authorities said they found 9.5 grams of marijuana in her possession; her detention and the criminal charge seemed odd, given that another US woman caught<\/a> with twice as much marijuana at the St. Petersburg Airport this summer was let go with a $235 fine, and similar cases have met with less than a month of jail time. It quickly became clear that the Russian government was linking Issachar\u2019s case to Burkov\u2019s. Then Russian prosecutors upgraded the charge from drug possession to drug smuggling, a much more serious crime that\u2014again\u2014seemed at odds with the tiny amount she\u2019d been charged with possessing.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring her detention there were many strange things, one after another, like a domino effect,\u201d Issachar\u2019s friend Dor Tzur, who runs a Facebook page devoted to her release, told<\/a> Haaretz. \u201cIt started with people saying \u2018if you want Naama released he has to be released too.\u2019\u201d Her case became a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre<\/a> in Israel, especially as its own political upheavals left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trying to score public victories, but Netanyahu\u2019s pleas to Putin for a pardon have so far gone unheeded.<\/p>\n As the fall unfolded and the Israeli authorities moved to extradite Burkov, Issachar was hit with a heavy prison sentence: More than seven years in Russian prison. \u201cThe punishment being demanded by the Russian prosecutor is disproportionate and does not fit the nature of the offense being attributed to Issachar,\u201d Netanyahu\u2019s spokesman\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0 after Issachar was sentenced. During what her family members said appeared to be a staged visit in October, Russian officials inspected<\/a> Issachar\u2019s prison conditions and she spoke of how well she was being treated.<\/p>\n Russian media, meanwhile, has portrayed<\/a> Burkov as merely an \u201cIT specialist,\u201d and reported that Burkov was being mistreated by Israeli authorities, even being deprived of \u201cfood and water.\u201d Russian media and diplomats repeatedly floated the idea that Burkov should be traded, in a Cold War\u2013style spy swap, for Issachar.<\/p>\n Recent weeks made clear, though, that Israel wouldn\u2019t budge on Burkov, and he arrived<\/a> on a flight from Israel at Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, DC, early Tuesday.<\/p>\n By the afternoon, as he made his first appearance in the Eastern District of Virginia courtroom, the Russian government had switched to blasting the US, posting<\/a> on Facebook that America had had \u201cunleash[ed] a hunt for our citizens across the world,\u201d adding that Russian diplomats would visit Burkov in jail in Virginia and were in touch with Burkov\u2019s relatives in Russia.<\/p>\n The statement was almost a carbon copy of the Russian Foreign Ministry\u2019s protests after alleged cybercriminal Dmitry Ukrainsky was arrested in Thailand in 2016: \u201cThe American authorities continue the unacceptable practice of \u2018hunting\u2019 for Russians all over the world, ignoring the norms of international laws and twisting other states\u2019 arms,\u201d it said<\/a> then.<\/p>\n What, if any, impact Burkov\u2019s extradition will now have on Issachar\u2019s seven-year sentence remains unclear.<\/p>\n