Russian hacker convicted in Seattle was part of historic prisoner swap
Among the Russian prisoners exchanged Thursday for U.S. captives in the biggest such swap in post-Soviet history was the son of a Russian oligarch prosecuted in Seattle for being a mobster whose operation stole more than $170 million through credit-card fraud.
When Roman Seleznev was arrested in 2014 by U.S. Secret Service agents, his laptop computer contained 1.7 million stolen credit-card numbers, according to federal prosecutors. He had operated for more than seven years in Russia without interference as one of the largest traffickers of stolen credit-card numbers in the world, prosecutors said at the time.
He was arrested after leaving Russia to travel to a luxury resort in the island nation of the Maldives. U.S. agents had been tipped to his whereabouts and persuaded Maldives officials to expel Seleznev on arrival, forcing him to fly to Guam, where agents were waiting to take him into custody.
Russia accused the U.S. of kidnapping him.
A federal jury in Seattle convicted Seleznev of 38 counts of fraud in 2016, and he was sentenced to 27 years in prison. He also was convicted of federal fraud and racketeering in Nevada and Georgia, where he received an additional 14-year sentence. Seleznov served time at a federal correctional institution near Butner, North Carolina.
On Thursday, Moscow released Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan, along with dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free, the White House said.
Seleznev, now 40, was described as the privileged son of a member of the Russian Parliament, Valery Seleznev – a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin – who lived a playboy lifestyle that included exotic cars, gambling and partying, all financed by selling credit-card numbers he stole by planting malicious software, or “malware,” on commercial-business computers in the U.S. and elsewhere, according to court documents and news accounts.
At one point during his pretrial incarceration at the SeaTac Federal Detention Center, federal agents filed documents indicating Seleznev and his father were plotting his escape and tampering with witnesses during his trial.
Jenny Durkan, the former U.S. Attorney in Western Washington whose office prosecuted Seleznev, noted that Seleznev spent a decade in federal prison before the deal to spring him.
“Ten years in prison is a long time, and if it helped get Evan back it was definitely the right thing to do,” Durkan said in a Thursday email, referring to Gershkovich.