Wealthy Russian with Kremlin ties gets 9 years in prison for hacking and insider trading scheme

abcnews.go.com:

A federal judge in Boston has sentenced a wealthy Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin to nine years in prison for his role in a nearly $100 million insider trading scheme that relied on stolen company earnings information hacked through U.S. c...

BOSTON — A wealthy Russian businessman with ties of the Kremlin was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison for his role in a nearly $100 million stock market cheating scheme that relied on secret earnings information stolen through the hacking of U.S. computer networks.

Vladislav Klyushin, who ran a Moscow-based information technology company that did work for the highest levels of the Russian government, was convicted in February of charges including wire fraud and securities fraud after a two-week trial in federal court in Boston.

Authorities say he personally pocketed more than $33 million in the scheme, which involved breaking into computer systems to steal earnings-related filings for hundreds of companies — including Microsoft and Tesla — and then using that insider information to make lucrative trades.

Klyushin, 42, has been jailed in the U.S. since his extradition in 2021. He was arrested in Switzerland after arriving on a private jet and just before he and his party were about to board a helicopter to whisk them to a nearby ski resort. After he completes his sentence, he's expected to be deported to Russia.

Klyushin, who walked into the courtroom in handcuffs, sat at a table with his attorneys and listened to an interpreter through headphones as lawyers argued over the sentence. At the advice of his attorney, he declined to address the judge before she sentenced him.

Four alleged co-conspirators — including a Russian military intelligence officer who’s