“Current members of the Trickbot Group are associated with Russian intelligence services. The Trickbot Group’s training aligned it with the goals of the Russian state and those previously pursued by Russian intelligence services. This included targeting the US government and US companies,” the US Treasury said in a statement.
The leader of Trickbot (aka Conti) is Vitaly Kovalev (“Bentley” and “Ben”).
According to the Cheka-OGPU, on November 16, 2015, the Investigative Department of the FSB of the Russian Federation opened a case against the Conti leaders under Article 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Part 2 (Creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs). At the same time, a search was carried out in Kovalev’s apartment, and he was detained. And then, together with his accomplices who were in Russia (some of the group’s representatives fled and were put on the wanted list), he found himself free. Kovalev and his accomplices were sentenced only in 2022. He received three years in prison and was immediately released from serving his sentence due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution.
It turns out that after his arrest in 2015, Kovalev began to cooperate, and in 2020 (according to the US Department of Justice) he became a member of Russian cyber troops against the backdrop of an FSB investigation into a criminal case.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
