A Russian man was sentenced on Tuesday to 4-1/2 years in U.S. prison for using a malware known as “Citadel” to steal banking information from thousands of computers, authorities said.
Dimitry Belorossov, 22, of St. Petersburg, had pleaded guilty in July 2014 to one count of conspiring to commit computer fraud for his role in a $500 million global cyber crime scheme that infected more than 11 million computers worldwide.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash in Atlanta imposed the sentence, which also requires Belorossov to pay more than $320,000 in restitution.
Belorossov’s lawyer, Arkady Bukh, said his client was only a teenager at the time of his crime but had taken responsibility for his actions by pleading guilty.
Citadel, which first appeared in 2011, was designed to capture banking and credit card information from computers and had the ability to block antivirus software.
Microsoft Corp and the FBI, working with authorities in dozens of countries, launched an assault in 2013 on the infrastructure used by the Citadel gang.
The global crime ring was believed to have stolen more than $500 million from dozens of financial institutions, including American Express Co, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse AG, PayPal Holdings Inc, HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Royal Bank of Canada and Wells Fargo & Co, Microsoft said in 2013.
