Latvia refuses US request to extradite hacker

Latvia is refusing to extradite a native man that the US believes was instrumental in writing a computer virus that was then used to steal millions.
Deniss Calovskis was named in January as one of the creators of the Gozi virus, which infected over a million computers and stole data that was used to raid bank accounts and rob significant amounts of money. His two co-creators are Romanian and Russian, with the latter already in a US jail and the former awaiting extradition. The application to extradite Calovskis has now been denied by the Latvian courts twice.

In addition to the decision made in court, Latvia’s foreign minister has backed Calovskis amid claims that the sentence he faces is inconsistent with the crime that he has allegedly committed. The US is said to be seeking a jail term of around 60 years for Calovskis, but the foreign minister, Edgars Rinkevics, says that this effectively equates to a life sentence and observed that, although he couldn’t say whether or not Calovskis broke the law, it seemed grossly disproportionate to what he is alleged to have done. Rinkevics also warned that the trans-national nature of the offence means that it could be extremely difficult to prove that any crimes were actually committed on US soil, and that there was therefore no reason Calovskis couldn’t serve his sentence in Latvia instead if he was indeed found guilty.

Unsurprisingly, the US is less than impressed with this line of argument. US attorney Preet Bharara claimed the three men were part of ‘modern-day bank robbery ring that required neither a gun nor a mask,’ and security analyst Graham Cluley criticised the lack of co-operation between the two countries and pointed out that, ‘If you caught a criminal who stole sums like that in traditional bank robberies, you would expect them to have the book thrown at them’. Calovskis is accused of being directly responsible for manipulating the malware to resemble a bank's webpage, tricking customers into inputting their personal details.

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