{"id":28508,"date":"2020-09-11T12:06:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T09:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=28508"},"modified":"2025-08-27T11:58:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T08:58:01","slug":"russian-troll-factory-employee-charged-with-fraud-involving-cryptocurrency-accounts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/russian-troll-factory-employee-charged-with-fraud-involving-cryptocurrency-accounts\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian &#8216;troll factory&#8217; employee charged with fraud involving cryptocurrency accounts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Treasury&#8217;s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has indicted Russian national Artem Lifshits in a conspiracy to steal Americans&#8217; personal data and to open fraudulent banking and cryptocurrency accounts, the agency said in a press release.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Russian Project Lakhta member charged with wire fraud conspiracy. Used stolen identities of U.S. persons to open fraudulent accounts and promote political influence operations. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/USATerwilliger?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@USATerwilliger<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/lWJMIS3hCd\">https:\/\/t.co\/lWJMIS3hCd<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 U.S. Attorney EDVA (@EDVAnews) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EDVAnews\/status\/1304136996860964867?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 10, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>According to the agency, the 27-year-old Lifshits worked at the Saint Petersburg-based &#8216;Agency of Internet Research&#8217;, known as the &#8216;troll factory&#8217;. He is linked to entrepreneur Evgeny Prigozhin. The funding of their activities was conducted through cryptocurrency, according to U.S. officials.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian obtained access to Americans&#8217; identification data in his role as head of the translation department of the Lakhta project, a post he has held since 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Lifshits opened fraudulent accounts that he used to fund the Lakhta project and for personal enrichment, the agency noted.<\/p>\n<p>Specific cryptocurrency exchanges involved in Lifshits and the Lakhta project were not named. However, at least one exchange said it had become a victim of fraud by Russians due to forged documents required to meet KYC requirements.<\/p>\n<p>According to testimony by a Secret Service investigator, the Lakhta project has run a wide-scale operation on social networks since April 2014 in an effort to influence the U.S. electoral process. The trolls&#8217; main aim was to incite civil unrest and polarize the population on political issues.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to Lifshits, the Treasury also sanctioned two other Russians connected to the organization \u2014 Anton Andreyev and Darya Aslanova.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Treasury sanctions Russia-linked election interference actors <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FVGjFUVnGz\">https:\/\/t.c\/FVGjFUVnGz<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Treasury Department (@USTreasury) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/USTreasury\/status\/1304081359590371328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 10, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The Treasury also imposed sanctions on cryptocurrency addresses linked to the defendants.<\/p>\n<p>As reported, in 2018 the U.S. Department of Justice released an indictment against 12 alleged Russian officers of the General Staff&#8217;s Main Directorate who used cryptocurrency to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Analysts say the transactions were conducted through the BTC-e exchange.<\/p>\n<p>In July 2020, the Main Center for Special Technologies of the Russian General Staff was added to the EU sanctions list for involvement in the <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/eu-sanctions-russias-gru-over-notpetya-ransomware-attack\">ransomware<\/a> NotPetya attacks in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Follow ForkLog news on Telegram: ForkLog Feed \u2014 the full news feed, ForkLog \u2014 the most important news and polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OFAC indicted Russian national Artem Lifshits in a conspiracy to steal Americans&#8217; personal data and to open fraudulent banking and cryptocurrency accounts, the agency said in a press release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1154,1280,686,26],"class_list":["post-28508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-crimes","tag-elections","tag-sanctions","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"20","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28510,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28508\/revisions\/28510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}