REvil Affiliate Off to Jail for Multimillion-Dollar Ransomware Scheme

Ukrainian national Yaroslav Vasinskyi, affiliate of the REvil ransomware-as-a-service group, was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison after pleading guilty to an 11-count indictment.

The charges against Vasinskyi, also known as Rabotnik, involved conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and damage to protected computers. According to court documents, he conducted thousands of ransomware attacks using the Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware variants.

"Yaroslav Vasinskyi and his co-conspirators hacked into thousands of computers around the world and encrypted them with ransomware," said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. "Then they demanded over $700 million in ransom payments and threatened to publicly disclose victims' data if they refused to pay."

Alongside his sentencing, Vasinskyi has been ordered to pay roughly $16 million in restitution for the role he played in over 2,500 ransomware attacks — a fraction of the $700 million in ransom payments that was demanded of his victims.