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A former Canadian government employee this week agreed to plead guilty in the US to charges related to his involvement with the organization. ransomware NetWalker.
Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, who was extradited to the United States on March 10, 2022, is charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and electronic fraud, willfully damaging a protected computer, and transmits a request involving damage to a protected computer.
The 34-year-old IT consultant from Gatineau, Quebec, was originally arrested in January 2021 following a coordinated law enforcement operation to dismantle the dark web infrastructure used by the NetWalker ransomware cybercriminal group to publish data sucked from their victims. The removal also brought its operations to a standstill.
A search warrant executed at Vachon-Desjardins’ home in Canada resulted in the seizure of 719 bitcoins, worth about $28.1 million at the time and $790,000 in Canadian currency.
In February 2022, the Ontario Court of Justice sentenced him to six years and eight months in prison after he pleaded guilty to five counts before being extradited to the US.
Declaring that the defendant was “excellent in what he did”, the court said that the individual “even improved the ransom messages used by NetWalker affiliates and ultimately persuaded the created NetWalker that uses a ‘mixing service’ to fabricate ransom payments in Bitcoin. . The ruling also called him “handsome, dignified and instantly likable.”
The attacks carried out by the NetWalker gang are believed to have targeted dozens of victims around the world, especially in the healthcare sector during the COVID-19 pandemic in an attempt to take advantage of the global crisis. opportunistically demanded.
It is known to have adopted the lucrative tactic of double blackmail to steal sensitive personal information before encode it and hold that data hostage in exchange for a cryptocurrency payment or the risk of having the information published online.
Vachon-Desjardins, as one of 100 affiliates of the NetWalker gang, is suspected of being involved in at least 91 attacks since April 2020, in addition to working for other RaaS groups such as Sodinokibi ( REvil), Suncrypt and Ragnarlocker.
According to court documents filed in district court in Florida, the NetWalker team amassed 5,058 bitcoins in illicit payments (approximately $40 million at the time of the transaction), with Vachon-Desjardins pared named as “one of the most prolific NetWalker ransomware affiliates” and is responsible. to extort about 1,864 bitcoins.
His role in the alleged criminal scheme ranges from researching victims and controlling servers that host the tools spying, privilege escalation, and data theft to executive accounts who posted stolen data on a data leak website and received payments after successful attacks.
The defendant, as part of the plea agreement, has now agreed to confiscate all digital assets held in his crypto wallet as well as dozens of devices including laptops, tablets , phones, game consoles and external hard drives, among others.
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