Russian sentenced to 14 years in prison

ATLANTA — A Russian cybercriminal who officials said helped hackers get fraudulent access to millions of debit card numbers and steal millions of dollars was sentenced this week in Atlanta to spend 14 years in prison — a sentence that will be served simultaneously with a 27-year term he was already serving.

Roman Seleznev, 33, coordinated with hackers to infiltrate an Atlanta-based company that processed credit and debit card transactions for financial institutions, the U.S. attorney’s office said Friday in a news release. They accessed 45.5 million debit card numbers and used some of them to withdraw $9.4 million from 2,100 ATMs in 280 cities around the world in a period of less than 12 hours in November 2008, prosecutors said.

Cybercriminals use aliases to operate anonymously on the dark web, parts of the internet reached using special software. Seleznev was known as Track2, Bulba and Ncux, prosecutors said.

Seleznev pleaded guilty Sept. 7 to a federal conspiracy to commit bank fraud charge in Georgia. U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones on Thursday sentenced him to serve 14 years. Jones also sentenced Seleznev to serve 14 years on a separate federal charge of participation in a racketeering enterprise out of Nevada. He’s also responsible for restitution of more than $50 million in the Nevada case and more than $2 million in the Georgia case.

In the Nevada case, Seleznev admitted that he became associated in January 2009 with an online international criminal organization, called Carder.su, that trafficked stolen data to commit identity theft, bank fraud and computer crimes, prosecutors said. He said he sold compromised credit card account data and other personal identifying information to other members of the organization, prosecutors said.

Victims suffered losses of more than $50 million as a result of Carder.su criminal activity, prosecutors said.