Russian Pleads Guilty to Hacking U.S. Financial Firms

A Russian man this week pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court to the hacking of various financial institutions in the United States, including JPMorgan Chase and Dow Jones.

The man, Andrei Tyurin, aka “Andrei Tiurin,” admitted to also hacking U.S. brokerage firms, financial news publishers, and other American companies. He was arrested in Georgia at the request of U.S. authorities and was extradited in September 2018.

The Department of Justice says Tyurin, 35, of Moscow, Russia, is responsible for one of the largest thefts of customer data from a single U.S. financial institution in history, in which the data of more than 80 million individuals was stolen from “a financial institution headquartered in Manhattan” (i.e. JPMorgan Chase).

Prosecutors say Tyurin committed the crimes with Gery Shalon, aka “Garri Shalelashvili,” aka “Gabriel,” aka “Gabi,” aka “Phillipe Mousset,” aka “Christopher Engeham”; Joshua Samuel Aaron, aka “Mike Shields”; and Ziv Orenstein, aka “Aviv Stein,” aka “John Avery,” “in furtherance of securities market manipulation, illegal online gambling, and payment processing fraud schemes perpetrated by Shalon, Aaron, Orenstein, and their co-conspirators.”

Between approximately 2012 and mid-2015, Tyurin engaged in hacking activities that resulted in the theft of personal information of over 100 million customers of the victim companies.

He allegedly acted “at the direction of Shalon and in furtherance of other criminal schemes overseen and operated by Shalon and his co-conspirators, including securities fraud schemes in the United States,” the DoJ notes.

One of the schemes involved artificially inflating the price of certain stocks publicly traded in the U.S. For that, the fraudsters marketed the stocks in a misleading manner to the customers of the victim companies after Tyurin stole their information in the intrusions.

The fruits of Tyurin’s hacking activities were also leveraged in various other operations run by Shalon and co-conspirators, including illegal Internet gambling businesses and international payment processors. These various criminal schemes helped them earn hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tyurin, who is scheduled to be sentenced on February 13, 2020, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to violate the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Related: Georgia Extradites Russian Data Theft Suspect to US

Related: Suspect Arrested in JPMorgan, Dow Jones Data Theft Case