French prosecutor requests ten years in prison for Vinnik

The French prosecutor demanded ten years in prison and a fine of 750,000 euros for the Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik.

On October 19, a new series of court hearings in the case of Vinnik began in Paris. 

Prosecutor Johanna Brouss has demanded the maximum sentence for 41-year-old Oleksandr Vinnik, accused of extorting millions of euros using the Locky malware.

According to investigators, the malware encrypted data in computer systems, which made it inaccessible if the victim did not pay a ransom in the cryptocurrency to obtain the decryption key.Between 2016 and 2018, 200 people were victims of fraud in France, 5,700 people worldwide, and the damage amounted to almost 135 million euros.

Alexander Vinnik was arrested during a familyholidays in Greece in July 2017 on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the United States, according to which he was charged with 21 charges, including the creation of a crypto exchange without a US license and the laundering of billions of dollars.

Greece supported the European arrest warrant andtransferred Vinnik to France in January 2020. France has also filed charges of cyber fraud and extortion. On the first day of the trial, the Russian citizen denied all charges, claiming that he did not even know about Locky's existence until his extradition to France. During a busy week of court hearings in Paris, Vinnik's main line of defense was that he was just a technical operator following the directors of BTC-e.

However, an Interpol investigator told the court that with the help of the United States, which provided data from BTC-e, it turned out that most of the profits were sent to an account associated with Vinnik.

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