Peter Levashov is a Russian

spammer Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose (especial ...

and

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1 ...

creator. He is suspected by

The Spamhaus Project The Spamhaus Project is an international organisation based in the Principality of Andorra, founded in 1998 by Steve Linford to track email spammers and spam-related activity. The name ''spamhaus'', a pseudo-German expression, was coined by Lin ...

of being one of the longest operating criminal spam-lords on the internet.

Background

Levashov is known by Spamhaus for his involvement with many other Eastern European and U.S. based

botnet A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its conn ...

spammers This is a list of individuals and organizations noteworthy for engaging in bulk electronic spamming, either on their own behalf or on behalf of others. It is not a list of all spammers, only those whose actions have attracted substantial independen ...

. He was a partner of American spammer Alan Ralsky. Peter Levashov was arrested by Spanish officials while in Barcelona, at the request of the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

. He is suspected by the United States of being the mastermind behind the

Kelihos botnet The Kelihos botnet, also known as Hlux, is a botnet mainly involved in spamming and the theft of bitcoins. History The Kelihos botnet was first discovered around . Researchers originally suspected having found a new version of either the Storm ...

and was extradited to the United States, arriving on 2 February 2018.

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

had filed a competing

extradition Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdict ...

request. The case was ''U.S. v. Levashov'', 17-mj-448,

U.S. District Court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

District of Connecticut The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (in case citations, D. Conn.) is the federal district court whose jurisdiction is the state of Connecticut. The court has offices in Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven. Appeals ...

(Bridgeport)., assigned to Robert N. Chatigny, Senior

United States District Judge The United States district courts are the trial courts of the United States federal judiciary, U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each United States federal judicial district, federal judicial district, which each cover o ...

Hartford Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

. Levashov pleaded not guilty to the charges. According to his lawyer, Petya yotrLevashov was detained in the

Bridgeport, Connecticut Bridgeport is the List of municipalities in Connecticut, most populous city and a major port in the U.S. state of Connecticut. With a population of 148,654 in 2020, it is also the List of cities by population in New England, fifth-most populous ...

prison until at least 5 February 2018. Levashov, who cooperated with the FBI during his imprisonment, was released in 2021 with his sentence reduced to time served (33 months.) An affidavit unsealed on February 5, 2018, showed Apple’s unexpected role in bringing the Russian spam king to justice. Peter Levashov allegedly ran the

under the alias “Severa,” renting out access to spammers and other cybercriminals. Despite Levashov’s significant efforts at anonymity, court records show that federal agents had been surveilling his

iCloud iCloud is a Personal cloud, cloud service from Apple Inc. launched on October 12, 2011 as a successor to MobileMe. , the service had an estimated 850 million users, up from 782 million users in 2016. iCloud enables users to sync their data to t ...

account since May 20, 2016, funneling back crucial information that may have led to his arrest.

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Levashov, Peter Living people Spammers 1980 births

Background

See also

References