The hacking events, orchestrated by Roman Seleznev, took place between 2008 and 2014. The hacks were executed throughout Washington state and the targets were all pizza outlets. At a trial, which concluded this week, Seleznev was found guilty, by jury, of 38 of 40 charges leveled against him. The two not-guilty verdicts were related to the alleged hacking of a Duvall pizzeria.
According to the prosecution, Seleznev hacked into point-of-sale systems in pizza restaurants. The Russian then installed malware. The malicious code then copied credit card numbers entered into the system. Seleznev then proceeded to sell lists of numbers to net markets. The numbers were then traded between criminal organizations. In total at least 3,700 businesses were affected by the various hack attacks.
The basis of the prosecution, Inverse reports, was three pieces of evidence were found on Seleznev’s laptop: the stolen credit-card numbers; evidence Seleznev had searched online court records to see whether he was under investigation; and a password cheat sheet linked to the hacking.
Roman Seleznev was arrested by the U.S. Secret Services on July 5, 2014, when attempting to leave the U.S. to travel to the Maldives. In his defense, Seleznev claimed the only evidence against him was a laptop which he claimed had been corrupted by persons unknown to him. Seleznev, the son of a member of the Russian Parliament (Valery Seleznev).
Seleznev will be sentenced on December 2; he faces a mandatory jail term of four years. Seleznev’s lawyers have indicated that their client intends to appeal against the verdict. The legal team also threw in a hint of political retaliation. Defense lawyer John Henry Browne told the Wall Street Journal: “If Roman was Canadian, this case would never have happened. here was definitely politics involved in this.”
