PRISONER SWAP LIST: Who Russia released, and who they got in return

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Details are emerging on some of the convicted criminals Russia got back Thursday, in exchange for releasing a total of 26 others they had been holding hostage in Russian prisons.

Those going back to Russia include a “convicted Russian assassin imprisoned in Germany and several Russian intelligence operatives and hackers held in the United States and Europe.”

From the Wall Street Journal: Among the U.S.-held prisoners included in the swap who are returning to Russia are a pair of notable convicted hackers, both of whom were facing lengthy sentences behind bars. Because foreign hackers often operate from countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the U.S., like Russia, they rarely face American courtrooms, and their convictions are often seen as major victories for the Justice Department. The hackers being returned are:

Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian national sentenced last year to nearly a decade in prison after being found guilty by a federal jury in Boston of hacking into corporate earnings databases to steal and trade on nonpublic information. U.S. officials had described Klyushin as having “extensive ties” to the Russian president’s office.

Roman Seleznev, the son of a member of the Russian parliament. Prosecutors had described Seleznev as “one of the most prolific credit-card thieves in history.” He was convicted in 2016 by a federal jury in Seattle on charges of hacking into hundreds of businesses and selling stolen data online, resulting in more than $169 million in fraud losses.

The Washington Post provided additional details on the above-mentioned hackers, as follows:

Vladislav Klyushin, 42, is a Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin. In September 2023, he was sentenced to nine years in a U.S. prison after being convicted of participating in a $93 million insider trading scheme that involved hacking corporate computer networks.

In Russia, Klyushin opened an information technology company called M-13 that did work for the Russian government. He was arrested in Switzerland in 2021 after arriving on a private jet just before a helicopter was supposed to take him to nearby ski resort. He is believed to have pocketed at least $34 million in the scheme, according to the Justice Department.

Roman Seleznev: The son of a Russian legislator, Roman Seleznev was convicted in 2016 by a U.S. federal court in Washington State for orchestrating a cyberattack on thousands of American businesses. He infiltrated point-of-sale systems to steal and sell credit card information, leading to a loss of $169 million for financial institutions.

In 2017, he received a 27-year prison sentence, the longest ever imposed for hacking in the United States. That same year, Seleznev also admitted to involvement in a racketeering operation in Nevada and a conspiracy to commit bank fraud in Georgia, for which he was given two 14-year sentences, to be served concurrently with his Washington sentence.

The Washington Post has compiled a complete list of off those involved in the prisoner swap deal, those those who Russia freed, and the convicted criminals going back to Russia.

Below is a social media thread that also provides details on the individual exchanges.

“The West freed journalists, anti-war activists, and opposition politicians, while Russia received assassins and spies. That is democracy vs. authoritarianism in a nutshell,” declared Volodymyr Tretyak, who posted the list, complete with photos.

WHO RUSSIA RECEIVED:

WHO THE WEST RECEIVED: 

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