Russian Hacker Involved in Gambling Scams Extradited by the US

The extradition of a notorious Russian hacker from Georgia was announced this week by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Andrei Tyurin is wanted in connection with a series of computer-based attacks that involved various financial institutions based in the US.

Tyurin is also associated with global online gambling scams, especially the Revenue Jet online-casino and Affactive operations. Both these operations had scammed consumers out of several million dollars in the last decade or so.

Tyurin’s extradition comes as a major move in the efforts to fight global hacking. The extradition is also part of an effort to track down Ziv Orenstein and Gery Shalon, two Israeli nationals who lead the larger criminal group that is associated with the hacks.

Shalon, Tyurin, and Orenstein were responsible for forming the international criminal ring and carrying out a range of illegal activities. According to the USAG office’s statement, the hacks carried out by the trio led to the largest theft of customer data from an American financial institution; the institution here being JP Morgan Chase.

Dangerous

Tyurin, aged 35 and a Moscow resident, is believed to be the main hacker behind the international hacking ring that targeted JP Morgan Chase. But, that wasn’t the ring’s only crime. They were also involved in carrying out online gambling scams under the name Affactive. Affactive was later changed to RevenueJet and then, to Netad Management.

The ring operated a series of fraudulent gambling sites under these banners, including Win Palace Casino, Slots Jungle Casino, Casino Titan, Jackpot Grand Casino, Grand Macau Live Dealer Casino, Slots of Fortune, Golden Cherry Casino, Begado Casino, Grand Macau Casino, and WinPalacePlay.

Other than that, Tyurin was personally involved in the hacks of over a thousand WordPress Bogs. The blogs were infected with malicious source code that compromised Google’s search algorithms. As a result, many of the top search results for gambling-related search terms would include the links to Tyurin’s fraudulent sites.

This way, Tyurin managed to attract thousands of online gamblers, who would then fall for the scam. The sites collected deposits/registration fees and even offered legitimate gaming options. However, withdrawals were never paid out, which is how the sites were identified as being scams.

Charged

Tyurin now faces a series of charges, including one count for wire fraud, which could put him behind bars for 30 years.