The 51-year-old dual Russian and Israeli national, who are said to be developers of the Rockbit Ransomware Group, were handed over to the US almost three months after he was formally indicted in connection with the e-crime scheme.
Rostislav Panev was previously arrested in Israel in August 2024. He is said to have worked as a developer for a ransomware gang from 2019 to February 2024.
“The extradition of Rostislav Panev to the New Jersey area makes that clear. If you are a member of the Rockbit Ransomware conspiracy, the US will find you and put you on trial,” said US lawyer John Giordano.
Lockbit has become one of the most prolific ransomware groups, attacking more than 2,500 entities in at least 120 countries around the world. Of these, nearly 1,800 were in the United States.
The victims consisted of individuals and small businesses, including hospitals, schools, nonprofit organizations, critical infrastructure, government and law enforcement agencies.
Syndicate’s cybercrime Spree has earned at least $500 million in illegal profits, causing billions of dollars to victims, and billions in the form of cost losses and costs from dealing with and recovering incidents.
Panev was responsible for designing and maintaining the locker’s codebase, earning around $230,000 between June 2022 and February 2024 in his role as developer of Lockbit.
“One of the work that PANEV admitted to have completed for Lockbit Group was developing code to disable anti-virus software. It was to deploy the malware to multiple computers connected to the victim network and print Lockbit Ransom Notes on all printers connected to the victim network,” the Department of Justice said.
“Panev also acknowledged that it created and maintained Lockbit malware code and provided technical guidance to the Lockbit group.”
In addition to Panev, six other Rockbit members, Mikhail Vasiliev, Ruslan Astamirov, Artursungatov, Ivan Zhennadievich Kondratiev, Mikhail Pavlovich Matthev, and Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, US Khoroshev, have been billed to Lockbit’s aa lockbit.
Additionally, Khoroshev, Matveev, Sungatov and Kondratyev are authorized by the Ministry of Finance’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for their role in launching cyberattacks.
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