Bogdan Nicolescu, 37, and Radu Miclaus, 37, both from Bucharest, Romania, were sentenced by the US court to 20 years and 18 years in jail, respectively. Cybercriminals went by the name Bayrob Group. The cybercriminals also gained access to credit cards and other information of victims, which they later sold on the darknet.
Cybercriminals were charged with 21 counts.
The charges against the two members of the Bayrob group included 21 separate counts of wire fraud, money laundering, aggravated identity theft, and other crimes. These members of the group were found guilty of using cryptojacking malware to mine bitcoin and monero on more than 400,000 computers and stealing $4 million. The malware allows criminals to use most of the processing power of the hosts with secrecy.
“Crimes committed using the internet will not go unpunished.”
The US Attorney Justin Herdman said that this sentence underscores the critical work being done to investigate and prosecute to the fullest extent those criminals who think presumed anonymity of the Internet can hide their pervasive and extensive criminals activities. He further added that these sentences send the clear and resounding message that crimes committed using the Internet will not go unpunished irrespective of where the criminals are operating from. In recent time there has been an increase in cryptojacking attacks.
