Russian professional basketball player Daniil Kasatkin faces arrest in France after the United States requested his detention for allegedly acting as a negotiator for a ransomware gang.
Daniil Kasatkin, a Russian basketball player, briefly played NCAA basketball at Penn State before he returned to Russia in 2019. Subsequently, he appeared in 172 games over four seasons with MBA-MAI before he eventually left the team.
According to French media, authorities arrested Kasatkin at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport on June 21st after he landed in France with his fiancée.
This action followed a United States international arrest warrant that accused him of serving as a negotiator for a ransomware gang.
Currently, Kasatkin remains in custody while the U.S. government pursues his extradition to face charges of “conspiracy to commit computer fraud” and “computer fraud conspiracy.”
His lawyer insists that Kasatkin did not commit any crimes and claims that the accusations relate to a second-hand computer he recently purchased.
“He bought a second-hand computer. He did absolutely nothing. He’s stunned,” his lawyer, Frédéric Bélot, told the media.
“He’s useless with computers and can’t even install an application. He didn’t touch anything on the computer: either someone hacked it, or the hacker sold it to him to use his identity as a cover.”
Although officials did not disclose the name of the ransomware gang, reports indicate it conducted attacks on more than 900 companies, including two federal agencies, between 2020 and 2022.
Notably, this description aligns with language used by the Department of Justice when referring to the infamous Conti ransomware gang, which emerged as a successor to Ryuk in 2020 and shut down in 2022 after a data breach.
However, no previous reports indicated that Conti had breached any federal agencies, although investigators linked the group to several attacks on state governments.
Moreover, last month, French police also arrested four alleged operators of the BreachForums hacking forum, including threat actors using the aliases IntelBroker and ShinyHunters.
Source: BleepingComputer, Lawrence Abrams
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