An Armenian man extradited from Ukraine to the United States has been charged for his alleged involvement in Ryuk ransomware attacks.
Karen Serobovich Vardanyan was arrested in Kyiv in April and extradited to the United States on June 18. Although Ukrainian authorities announced at the time that a 33-year-old linked to Ryuk attacks had been handed over, they did not reveal his name. The US Justice Department has now confirmed that Vardanyan is the suspect. He faces charges of conspiracy, computer-related fraud, and computer-related extortion.
Each charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. Vardanyan has pleaded not guilty and will remain in custody until his trial begins in late August. He has been charged alongside Levon Georgiyovych Avetisyan, another Armenian national. Avetisyan has been detained in France and is awaiting extradition to the United States.
Two Ukrainian nationals, Oleg Nikolayevich Lyulyava and Andrii Leonydovich Prykhodchenko, both aged 53, have also been charged, although they have not yet been apprehended. According to the Justice Department, Vardanyan and his co-conspirators deployed Ryuk ransomware on hundreds of servers and workstations between March 2019 and September 2020. Ukrainian officials reported that the cybercrime group carried out more than 2,400 attacks and collected over $100 million in ransom. The Justice Department added that Vardanyan and his partners received more than 1,600 bitcoins from victims, worth over $15 million at the time. Ryuk ransomware has not appeared in recent headlines, and its current threat level is unclear. Vardanyan is not the first to face prosecution in the United States for connections to Ryuk. In 2023, a Russian national who admitted to laundering money for the group was sentenced to time served.
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