(Left) Artem Radchenko (Right) Oleksandr Ieremenko
Two Ukrainians nationals, Viacheslavovich Radchenko and Oleksandr Vitalyevich Ieremenko are on the run from the law.
The announcement did not state where the authorities believed the nationals were hiding, but a 2018 report in the Verge indicated that Ieremenko fled to Russia.
“The reward money for tips that lead to the apprehension of Ukrainian citizens Artem Viacheslavovich Radchenko and Oleksandr Vitalyevich Ieremenko will be drawn from the State Department’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program.”
Today we are asking you for help worldwide in the search for two of our most wanted cyber criminals, charged with hacking into the #SEC. This is our story… #TheCyberSearch pic.twitter.com/PdnABXF7Ku
— U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) July 22, 2020
According to the U.S. Justice Department, the two nationals were indicted by a grand jury in January 2019 on 16-count criminal charges of wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and computer fraud, etc.
Radchenko and Ieremenko, partook in the hacking of EDGAR—Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system—in 2016 to steal nonpublic corporate information. It is an electronic filing repository for company data, including future announcements and corporate financial records.
The hacking of EDGAR started in February 2016 and continued through October 2016 but was not discovered by the SEC until 2017, when hacker’s access was cut off.
Despite the discovery in 2017, it took two years before the case was brought to court.
“By hacking into one test server, the hackers retrieved ‘test files’ uploaded by companies before publicly releasing the information. The traders and companies that received this information from the hackers then made trades based on this information and earned $4.1 million through trading.
Radchenko and Ieremenko played definitive roles in the hacking of EDGAR. According to the State Department, Radchenko organized numerous schemes, including SEC’s EDGAR system, from February 2016-March 2017, while recruiting Ieremenko and other Ukrainian hackers.
Ieremenko, on the other hand, handled the sales and negotiations of stolen data to six traders and two companies. He also hacked the server in 2016 by gaining illegal access to its authentication controls.
The SEC and Justice Department also believed that Ieremenko was behind the breach of the U.S news wires. He planned to steal confidential, private information on business as part of an international insider-trading scheme.
The six traders who bought and sold based on Ieremenko information were tracked down by the SEC
As at April, the SEC settled cases with two of the traders accused of profiting from the theft of the inside information. Cases against the other stockbrokers and companies are still pending.
