Two Ukrainian Citizens Performed For The Trial From Prague To Dallas

[✨ Megiddo]

The federal prosecutor's office for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas reported that on March 3, the citizens of Ukraine who were arrested there a year earlier were extradited from Prague to Dallas: 39-year-old Viktor Vorontsov, aka "Alex" and "Alex Coin", and 40-year-old Zlata Hanska Muzhuk, she is Julia Muzhuk, Zlata Hanska, Desislava Nikolov, "Zaychi" and "Desiree" in two spellings.

During the period of alleged criminal activity, Vorontsov lived in the Czech capital Prague and called himself "Alex" and "AlexCoin" on the Internet. Zlata Muzhuk at the same period constantly lived in the Ukrainian city of Cherkassy and on the Internet called herself the names and nicknames given above. In addition to them, in case No. 3-20CR, a Russian citizen permanently residing in Hungary is an accomplice (Co-Conspirator or SS), but not charged.

On March 4, Vorontsova and Muzhuk were taken to Federal Magistrate Judge Rene Toliver, who informed them about the money laundering charge and left them in custody at the disposal of the Marshal's service in charge of their extradition. The prosecutor's office insisted on such a measure of restraint, since arrested foreigners a) can hide and b) are obliged to appear in court on demand. Both received court-appointed lawyers, and Vorontsov is represented by Courtney Stamper and his alleged accomplice, Kevin Ros. The case is being heard with the Ukrainian translator Natasha Ksendzoff. The prosecution is represented by Assistant Attorney General for the Northern District of Texas Robert Nichols.

Where the defendants are being kept is not specified, but Vorontsov and Muzhuk are not yet in the database of federal prisons. According to the prosecution, they were "members of an international organized group that helped cybercriminals cash and launder money", acting throughout 2017. Specifically, the case deals with 7 electronic transfers in October and November 2017 for a total amount of "almost 500 thousand dollars." A press release from the prosecutor's office explains that the cybercriminals, assisted by Vorontsov and Muzhuk, "used the stolen data to penetrate bank accounts, from which they deceived money into accounts opened and controlled by other criminals." Vorontsov and Muzhuk for a fee provided the criminal group with such open accounts, as well as "money mules" for receiving, transferring and hiding money,

Interestingly, the members of this criminal group in the case were called “actors” of various roles - “cyber actors” received money, and “cash-out actors” laundered them. The "money mules" were subordinate to the "cashing players" and, on their instructions, opened dummy companies and bank accounts to which money stolen by the "cyber players" was received and left. In particular, this was done by a Russian SS living in Hungary, who opened KFT there - the Hungarian abbreviation for our LLC (Limited Liabilitity Corporation). CC and another "player" opened a corporate account in the Hungarian bank MagNet Magyar Kozossegi in the name of KFT Baltic Cold Lady. The case also includes Oberbank AG in Austria, where CC opened a personal account in March 2016, and BRE Bank in Poland.

The cyber-fraudulent company A was based in Dallas and had an account with a local branch of Chase Bank. Another victim, Company B, was located in Fullerton, California, with an account at a local Commercial Bank office. In addition to them, the victims of the crooks are private citizens "No. 1" with an account in the brokerage firm Charles Schwab and Co., as well as "No. 2", "No. 3" and "No. 4" with accounts in Bank of America. The indictment, which has so far fit into 9 pages, lists 6 out of 7 episodes of transfers of stolen money from the United States to Europe from October 11 to November 13, 2017, totaling $ 498,820. Where the seventh episode mentioned in the press release went is not clear, and there is no money left for it from the “almost half a million” noted in the press release. Judging by the scale of the charges, Viktor Vorontsov and Zlata Muzhuk are a small cybercriminal fry, but, nevertheless,

Fear has big eyes, and the fear of the former Czechoslovakia of the former "Big Brother" of the USSR is even more so. In mid-August last year, the same "Radio Prague", but with reference to the "secret service", reported the arrest of a Russian diplomat who "illegally bought ammunition, including parts of a sniper rifle", in the village of Rikani, 23 kilometers from Prague. The diplomat worked in the office of the military attaché of the Russian embassy, was released due to immunity and immediately flew to Moscow. At the same time, it was reported that in April 2020, the mayor of Prague had to be taken under increased protection. According to the network news service Respekt, which referred to an anonymous "intelligence source", a citizen arrived in Prague with a Russian diplomatic passport and was tasked with poisoning the mayor of Zdenek Grzyb with ricin poison. This message has not received further confirmation,

Without going into details, the federal prosecutor's office for the Northern District of Texas reported that our FBI was investigating this case together with the National Agency for Combating Organized Crime (NCOZ) of the Czech Republic. At the end of January 2020, NCOZ informed the FBI that Muzhuk was visiting Vorontsov at his home in Prague, and at the same time a federal magistrate judge in Dallas issued a warrant for their arrest, and an FBI agent flew to Prague. On February 6, 2020, Muzhuk and Vorontsov were arrested; during the arrest and search, valuable material evidence was seized from them. In a press release, Dallas prosecutors called their arrest an "unprecedentedly swift" response from the two states. Both resisted extradition, but the Czech Ministry of Justice made such a decision against Muzhuk on December 4, 2020, and Vorontsov on January 21, 2021. Both were extradited on March 3.

Viktor Vorontsov and Zlata Muzhuk are still considered innocent, but if the court decides otherwise, they will become the second Ukrainian money mule drivers extradited to the United States in the last two years. As previously reported, on February 11 this year in the federal court of the Western District of North Carolina in the city of Charlotte, 38-year-old Alexander Sergeevich Musienko, a native of Odessa and a citizen of Ukraine, was sentenced to 87 months in prison. A grand jury at the federal court for the Western District of North Carolina in June 2016 in absentia brought “Alexander Musienko, aka Oleksandr Serkhiovich Musienko, aka Robert Davis, and aka Pli,” charges of fraud and money laundering.

According to an arrest warrant issued by a judge in Charlotte, Musienko was put on the international wanted list, and in 2018 he was arrested in South Korea. At the end of March 2019, Musienko was extradited to the United States, and on November 20 of the same year, he pleaded guilty only to fraud with electronic transfers, or rather, to the fact that he was "an organizer, leader, manager or leader of criminal activity." At the same time, he “deliberately and falsely registered the databases and knowingly used them to commit offenses,” and the amount of established or alleged damage from his actions “exceeded $ 3.5 million and did not exceed $ 9.5 million,” and “there were more than 10 victims. ".

According to the prosecution and the defendant agreed, from 2009 to 2012, Alexander Musienko collaborated with “cybercriminals of Eastern Europe”, who during this time stole at least $ 2.8 million from the bank accounts of US citizens and laundered the stolen money abroad. One of the documents in the case states that during the same time, "cybercriminals from Eastern Europe kidnapped and laundered about $ 5 million in the United States." Musienko's role in this scam was that he found and recruited "mules" who, for a reward, received the stolen money into their bank personal and corporate accounts and transferred them to specified addresses outside the United States, receiving 5% of the amount of each transfer. while Musienko's share was 25%.

Commenting on such crimes, Russian blogger Timur Musin popularly explained that “in zoology, a mule is a hybrid of a donkey and a horse, which is equally similar to both of its parents, but has advantages in great strength and endurance. The ideal beast of burden. In turn, in the science of finance, a money mule (in Russian common parlance - "cashier") is understood as a person who is used to migrate funds from some individuals and organizations to others. It is worth noting that, as a rule, this money is of a criminal nature and is obtained from various types of crimes (drug trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, corruption or tax evasion). The services of cashing mules are designed to give them a legal look, withdraw money from the country, avoid taxes, and also hide the real, or rather, criminal, source of their origin. "
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