Russian-Canadian LockBit Affiliate Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison

A Russian-Canadian man has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to deploying ransomware attacks as part of his affiliation with the LockBit operation.

34-year old Mikhail Vasiliev was arrested in 2022 in connection with his alleged part in the LockBit ransomware conspiracy. He had been living in Canada most of his life, having immigrated from Russia some two decades prior.

During the COVID pandemic, Vasiliev took up hacking from his garage as a “profession,” helping the infamous LockBit ransomware gang extort millions from victim companies across North America and the rest of the world.

Canadian police reportedly caught Vasiliev right in the middle of a ransomware attack when they apprehended him in October 2022.

The Canadian court system finally delivered the verdict against Vasiliev this week: four years in prison on eight counts of cyber extortion, mischief and weapons charges.

“Mikhail Vasiliev took responsibility for his actions, and that played out in today's courtroom with the sentence that was imposed,” said Louis Strezos, Vasiliev's lawyer from outside the courthouse on Tuesday, CTV News reports.

Judge Michelle Fuerst called Vasiliev a “cyber-terrorist,” saying his conduct was “planned, deliberate, and coldly calculated,” adding that Vasiliev's actions were “far from victimless crimes” and that he was “motivated by his own greed.”

During his plea, he admitted to holding sensitive data hostage in exchange for ransom payments from victims across Canada, including in Saskatchewan, Quebec and Newfoundland.

Vasiliev tried to extort the Canadian companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars each between 2021 and 2022, “paralyzing them while encrypting their computer systems and financial information,” according to CTV News.

Judge Fuerst ordered Vasiliev to pay back more than $860,000 in restitution to his Canadian victims.

Vasiliev will be extradited to the US where he faces more cybercrime charges, including conspiracy to intentionally damage protected computers and to transmit ransom demands, meaning he may end up spending more than four years behind bars. As he awaits extradition, his family plans to move back to Russia.

This year, international law enforcement joined forces to take down the LockBit ransomware operation, seizing its infrastructure and arresting six gang members to date, including Vasiliev.

LockBit operators are believed to have extorted more than $100 million from victim companies.

LockBit recently reemerged operating new leak sites.