Kazakhstan extradites Nikita Kislitsin, former Group IB employee, to Russia

“At the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia, the competent authorities of the Republic of Kazakhstan extradite Nikita Kislitsin to face criminal charges under Part 3 of Art. 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (illegal access to computer information protected by law) and paragraphs. “a”, “d” part 2 art. 163 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (extortion),” the department said in a statement.

According to investigators, in October 2022, Kislitsin, together with his accomplices, obtained illegal access to data on the server of one of the companies, after which this information was copied.

Then the hackers, according to law enforcement officials, demanded that the company pay an amount equivalent to 550 thousand rubles in cryptocurrency.

In 2020, the US Department of Justice charged Kislitsin with hacker attacks on several US companies. The agency noted that it was related to the theft of data from users of the Formspring social network. However, having detained Kislitsin at Washington’s request, Kazakhstan refused to extradite him to the United States.

Earlier this year, the Federal Security Service completed an investigation into the case against IB Group founder Ilya Sachkov. In July, a Moscow court sentenced the businessman to 14 years in a maximum security colony in a treason case. Sachkov did not agree with the verdict: his defense filed an appeal, but the appeal court recognized that the decision was legal.