Details of the scandal with the Ukrainian insider scheme in the US

Trader Igor Dubovoy, a 29-year-old from the USSR, confessed in court that he participated in an international hacker network that stole press releases of companies. Photo: Depositphotos

Trader Igor Dubovoy admitted in a US court that he participated in an international hacker network that extracted and used non-public corporate information for trading on the stock market, the agency reported Bloomberg.

29-year-old Dubovoy, who bought from hackers mined before the official publication of the companies, will pay 11 a million dollars he illegally earned on the market.

Dubovoy was arrested last August, as were several other defendants in the case, which is considered the largest of its kind in the entire history of the US stock market.

As wrote earlier ForumDaily, just for him passes more than 30 people, mostly immigrants from the former USSR.

According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), network participants earned more than 100 million dollars using this scheme.

Ukrainian hackers have been hacking the servers of international agencies specializing in information disclosure for several years - PRNewswire, Marketwired and Business Wire. Then, not yet published press releases were transmitted to market participants and used for transactions in shares of dozens of companies, including Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, Caterpillar, Oracle.

According to investigators, it all started in 2010, when a Ukrainian hacker first hacked into the servers of agencies distributing company press releases. He spoke about his “success” in a video posted online, which attracted interest from traders, including Dubovoy. This is how the story of cooperation between hackers and traders began.

Traders provided “tips” to companies that needed to disclose important information and expressed their “wishes,” and the hackers received monetary rewards.

In particular, the Financial Times reported, only as a result of gaining access to Caterpillar reporting for the second quarter of 2011 of the year sent to PRNewswire agency three days before the official release, the criminals earned almost $ 650 thousand from operations with the company's securities.

In October, 2013, Panera Bread, sent a press release to the news agency about quarterly reporting correction, ordering the text to be released, according to usual practice, after the market was closed. Having access to the post earlier than others, traders earned more than $ 1 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In the wake of this case, Business Wire, Marketwired, PRNewswire, which, being an analogue of Russian authorized agencies, distribute issuers' press releases on quarterly results, major transactions and other important events of most US issuers, took steps to improve the security of their systems.

Earlier USA accused Russian hackers in cyber attack on Pentagon email. Hackers got access to the data of about four thousand Pentagon employees.