NEW YORK, November 11. /TASS/. Russian national Alexander Zhukov that has been found guilty of online fraud in the US, has been sentenced to ten years in prison and the repayment of over $3.8 mln, according to a statement posted on the website of the US Department of Justice on Wednesday.
"At the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, Zhukov was sentenced by United States District Judge Eric Komitee to 10 years’ imprisonment for perpetrating a digital advertising fraud scheme through which the defendant and his co-conspirators stole more than $7 million from US advertisers, publishers, platforms, and others in the US digital advertising industry. The Court also ordered Zhukov to pay $3,827,493 in forfeiture," the statement said. The penalty was imposed on four counts, including fraud using electronic means and money laundering.
Investigators allege that Zhukov and his co-conspirators programmed the bots to appear and behave like human internet users between September 2014 and December 2016, to create the illusion that human internet users were viewing the advertisements loaded onto the spoofed webpages.
Zhukov was detained on a US warrant in Bulgaria in November 2018. Five other Russians were also charged in the case: Boris Timokhin, Denis Avdeyev, Dmitry Novikov, Alexander Isayev, and Mikhail Andreyev. Moreover, the US charged two Kazakh citizens: Yevgeny Timchenko and Sergei Ovsyannikov. In January 2019, Zhukov was extradited to the US.