The Good
Former Canadian government employee, Sebastian Vachon-Desjardins, pleaded guilty this week to ransomware crimes that had earned him $21 million in Bitcoin and $500,000 in seized cash. For over 10 months, Vachon-Desjardins operated as an affiliate for Netwalker, a Russian-speaking ransomware gang that targeted organizations in more than 30 countries during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vachon-Desjardins has been sentenced to a 20-year prison term in the United States after admitting to four charges including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer fraud, intentional damage to a protected computer system, and sending a demand in relation to damaging a protected computer.
Vachon-Desjardins was one of Netwalker’s most prolific affiliates according to U.S. court filings. Netwalker’s targets included schools, hospitals, emergency services, law enforcement agencies, and businesses, all of which were on the receiving end of ransom demands in exchange for the return of their encrypted data. With as many as 400 entities affected and a collected total of $40 million in ransom payments, Vachon-Desjardins himself was found to have received a third of the proceeds.
The DOJ’s press release noted that Netwalker’s attacks specifically took advantage of the global pandemic crisis to extort victims. The U.S. District Judge who doled out the sentence went above the 12 to 15-year prison term suggested by federal guidelines with the intention of…
