Alexander Petrov | |
---|---|
Personal details | |
Nationality | Russian |
Alexander Petrov and two other men were responsible for DDoS for hire and extortion. [1] A multinational law enforcement group of British, American, and Russian private individuals and law enforcement agents captured Alexander Petrov and his two accomplices, Ivan Maksakov and Denis Stepanov. [2]
The three were heading an extortion ring which was extorting money from various online services, e.g. banks, Internet casinos, and other web based businesses. Reportedly, the damages caused by the ring are in the millions of dollars range. On October 8, 2007, Petrov, Maksakov, and Stenanov were found guilty and were sentenced to eight years in prison in the Russian Federation and fined 100,000 rubles. [3]
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.
Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offense; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, although making unfounded threats in order to obtain an unfair business advantage is also a form of extortion.
Russian organized crime or Russian mafia, otherwise known as Bratva, is a collective of various organized crime elements originating in the former Soviet Union. The initialism OPG is Organized Criminal Group, used to refer to any of the Russian mafia groups, sometimes modified with a specific name, e.g. Orekhovskaya OPG. Sometimes the initialism is translated and OCG is used.
A protection racket is a type of racket and a scheme of organized crime perpetrated by a potentially hazardous organized crime group that generally guarantees protection outside the sanction of the law to another entity or individual from violence, robbery, ransacking, arson, vandalism, and other such threats, in exchange for payments. The perpetrators of the racket may protect vulnerable targets from other dangerous individuals and groups or may simply offer to refrain from themselves carrying out attacks on the targets, and usually both of these forms of protection are implied in the racket. Due to the frequent implication that the racketeers may contribute to harming the target upon failure to pay, the protection racket is generally considered a form of extortion. In some instances, the main potential threat to the target may be caused by the same group that offers to solve it in return for payment, but that fact may sometimes be concealed in order to ensure continual patronage and funding of the crime syndicate by the coerced party.
Nuestra Familia is a criminal organization of Mexican American (Chicano) prison gangs with origins in Northern California. While members of the Norteños gang are considered to be foot soldiers of Nuestra Familia, being a member of Nuestra Familia itself does not signify association as a Norteño. Some law enforcement agents speculate that the Nuestra Familia gang, which operates in and out of prisons, influences much of the criminal activity of thousands of Norteño gang members in California. The gang's main sources of income are distributing cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine within prison systems as well as in the community and extorting drug distributors on the streets.
The Genovese crime family, also sometimes referred to as the Westside, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City and New Jersey as part of the American Mafia. They have generally maintained a varying degree of influence over many of the smaller mob families outside New York, including ties with the Philadelphia, Patriarca, and Buffalo crime families.
William Morris ("Willie") Bioff was a Jewish-American organized crime figure who operated as a Chicago pimp and corrupt union leader between the 1920s and the 1940s. Using his position as head of the movie production workers' union, Bioff helped Chicago Outfit boss Frank Nitti successfully extort millions of dollars from Hollywood film studios by using the threat of a general strike that would paralyze the American film industry.
James Galante is an American convicted felon and associate of the Genovese crime family, owner of the defunct Danbury Trashers minor-league hockey team and a defunct racecar team fielding cars for Ted Christopher, and ex-CEO of Automated Waste Disposal (AWD), a company that holds waste disposal contracts for most of western Connecticut and Westchester and Putnam counties in New York.
Alexander Viktorovich Solonik was a Russian gangster, known for his reputation as a notorious hitman in the Russian criminal underworld. Also known as Sasha-Macedonian, Valerianych and Superkiller, Solonik was involved in Russian Mob activity for much of the 1990s until disappearing after his second escape from prison. Solonik was found dead in Athens, Greece, in 1997.
The Patriarca crime family, also known as the New England Mafia, the Boston Mafia, the Providence Mafia, or The Office is an Italian-American Mafia family in New England. It has two distinct factions, one based in Providence, Rhode Island, and the other in Boston, Massachusetts. The family is currently led by Carmen "The Cheese Man" Dinunzio, who is part of the Boston faction. The family is primarily active in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut with other territory throughout New England.
Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov was a Russian mafia boss and thief in law who was believed to have connections with Russian state intelligence organizations and their organized crime partners. He operated in both the Soviet Union and the United States. His nickname, "Yaponchik" (Япончик) translates from Russian as "Little Japanese", due to his faintly Asian facial features.
Barrett Gibson Lyon is an American Internet entrepreneur.
Michael Clemente, , was a New York mobster in the Genovese crime family who became a major force in controlling the East River waterfront of Manhattan from the 1940s to 1979. His principal territory was between piers 36 and 42. In 1943, Clemente, who was a Caporegime of Joseph Lanza, took over his boss's waterfront rackets at the Fulton Fish Market on the East River when "Socks" Lanza went to prison for 7½ years for extortion.
The Abergil crime family is a crime organization based in Israel, and located around the world, founded by Ya'akov Abergil. The group was headed by Ya'akov Abergil until his death in 2002, and is now run under the auspices of Itzhak (Itzik) Abergil, and his brothers Meir Abergil and Avraham (Ibi) Abergil. Its illicit activities include drug trafficking, both in Israel and the US, murder, extortion, embezzlement, money laundering, the control of illegal casinos and other crimes. Considered one of the six major organized-crime cells in Israel, and one of the world's top 40 biggest drug importers to the United States, the Abergils have been arrested and detained multiple times worldwide.
Ivan Maksakov was one of the three men behind the start of DDoS attacks for hire and extortion. Ivan was most famously known as "eXe", but he also used the nicknames: NASA, b-boy, X, x890, and x3m1st.
John Barbato, nicknamed "Johnny Sausage", is an American mobster and former captain in the Genovese crime family. Barbato served as acting underboss from 2003 to 2005.
Sextortion employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim. Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercion, as well as to the category of sexual exploitation in which threatened release of sexual images or information is the means of coercion.
Operation Power Outage was a sting operation targeted at arresting and indicting members of the criminal group Armenian Power operating in the United States. The group is accused of racketeering offenses, bank fraud schemes, kidnappings, and drug trafficking. Armenian Power which originated 20 years ago in East Hollywood and has over 200 members, has developed from a street gang into an international criminal organization.
Corruption in Uzbekistan is a serious problem. There are laws in place to prevent corruption, but enforcement in terms of laws regarding corruption is very weak. Low prosecution rates of corrupt officials is another contributing factor to the rampant corruption in Uzbekistan. It is not a criminal offense for a non-public official to influence the discretion of a public official. The judicial system faces severe functional deficits due to limited resources and corruption.
On August 31, 2015, the English Wikipedia community discovered 381 sockpuppet accounts operating an undisclosed paid editing ring. Participants in the ring extorted money from mid-sized businesses who had articles about themselves rejected by the encyclopedia's "Articles for Creation" process, in which drafts are submitted for approval to experienced editors. The ring was nicknamed "Operation Orangemoody" after the first account uncovered in the sockpuppet investigation and was Wikipedia's biggest conflict-of-interest scandal as of June 2021, exceeding the scope of the Wiki-PR editing of Wikipedia incident in which approximately 250 sockpuppets were found and blocked in 2013.