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The U. S. government has sanctioned a Russian national for allegedly laundering millions of dollars in ransoms paid to victims on behalf of Americans connected to the infamous Ryuk ransomware group.
According to a report by the U. S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), 37-year-old Ekaterina Zhdanova is accused of employing fraudulent virtual currency transfers and accounts to launder cash to gain advantages from Russian elites, ransomware groups, and other malicious actors in order to help them evade fraud. Economic sanctions imposed on the Russian currency formula following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ryuk first made the impression in 2018 and is known for his targeted attacks on the American public sector. In 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the gang was linked to an attack on Universal Health Services, one of the largest healthcare providers in the United States. , which charge the healthcare giant at least $67 million in lost revenue.
OFAC said Zhdanova laundered more than $2. 3 million in “alleged victim payments” for a Ryuk ransomware subsidiary in 2021. Zhdanova allegedly controlled the illicit budget through cryptocurrency exchanges that lacked anti-money laundering controls, adding Russia-based exchange Garantex, which is the only issue. to U. S. sanctions in 2022.
Zhdanova also uses classical corporations to access the foreign monetary system, and through a luxury watch company that has offices around the world, according to OFAC. According to Chainalysis, a search of Zhdanova’s email address also shows that she is lately promoting a 13-room hotel in Moscow that “generates a profit of up to one million rubles per month,” or about $11,000 at the time of writing, though it’s unclear. The hotel business is related to its alleged money laundering activity.
TechCrunch sent Zhdanova several WhatsApp and Signal messages to the phone number indexed on the list, but did not hear back.
Zhdanova was also accused of making virtual currency movements on behalf of oligarchs who had moved abroad. According to OFAC, a Russian oligarch sought out Zhdanova to move more than $100 million in wealth on her behalf to the United Arab Emirates, and she also helped similar clients. download tax residency in the country, as well as Dubai-based ID cards and bank accounts.
In February, U. S. governments ruled that the U. S. government had decided to suspend the pandemic. The U. S. and U. K. imposed sanctions on seven other individuals allegedly connected to a single network, the Conti and Ryuk ransomware variants, as well as the notorious Trickbot banking Trojan. The sanctions came days after 30-year-old Russian citizen Denis Mihaqlovic Dubnikov. , pleaded guilty in a U. S. court to laundering the Ryuk ransomware budget after he was extradited from the Netherlands.
Do Government Sanctions Work Against Ransomware Teams?