Alexei Litvinenko, a 44-year-old Ukrainian, was sentenced to four years in prison in the United States for working for Conti, a Russian-linked cybercrime group that publicly supported the Russian Federation after the full-scale invasion began. Litvinenko helped find potential victims, worked on malware, and received cryptocurrency for it.
Alexei Litvinenko, a 44-year-old Ukrainian, was sentenced to four years in prison in the United States for working for Conti, a Russian-linked cybercrime group that publicly supported the Russian Federation after the full-scale invasion began. Litvinenko helped find potential victims, worked on malware, and received cryptocurrency for it.
This is reported by The Register.
According to the case file, he was tasked with working on a loader, a program that gets onto a victim's computer and runs other malware on it. The US Department of Justice describes him as both a developer and a participant in attacks on other people's systems.
So his role was not limited to the code. Through his Google account, Litvinenko searched for potential victims in ZoomInfo, stored ransom notes and Conti files, and kept the stolen data in the Mega cloud storage. The investigation linked information stolen from 12 organizations to his accounts — eight in the United States and four in other countries. The American victims claimed total losses of at least $1.5 million.
Conti was one of the largest ransomware groups of its time. According to the FBI, its attacks affected more than 1,000 victims, and the amount of ransoms paid exceeded $150 million. After the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the group publicly declared its support for the Russian authorities and threatened to attack the critical infrastructure of Russia's opponents. After this, a conflict began within Conti, and tens of thousands of internal messages and some of the group's tools were leaked online.
Conti later formally ceased to exist, but its members and associated cybercriminals continued to work on other ransomware projects.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that in October 2025, Ireland extradited Alexei Litvinenko to the United States due to his alleged involvement in the Russian hacking group Conti. At that time, he faced up to 25 years in prison on two charges. Now the court has sentenced him to four years.
