DOJ’s recent news release about Yevgeniy Nikulin, a visitor to Czech Republic from Russia, adds a new country to Mr. Nikulin’s travel itinerary: the United States of America. Instead of a tourist visa, the document allowing the U.S. visit would be a grand jury indictment for allegedly hacking computers of LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring. List of countries with which the United States has extradition agreements is a public information, freely available to anyone, and codified under 18 U.S.C. § 3181. Unofficial, but more colorful version is also available on Wikipedia. Russian Federation is not on the list. But, Czech Republic extradition history with the U.S. goes back to 1925. Recent confirmation of US-Czech extradition friendship is Treaty Doc. 109-14 (Agreement to ensure conformity with U.S.-EU Extradition Treaty), placed Czech Republic. Perhaps, more interesting are the the charges that Mr. Nikulin faces, because these apply to anyone (within and without U.S.). According to the indictment, these are: 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1028A(a)(1), 1029(a)(2), 1030(a)(2)(C), 1030(a)(5)(A). Fraud and related activity in connection with computers 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) states: Whoever— * * * intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains— * * * information from any protected…
Published October 24, 2016 by Yuri Starikov
