- Maksim Silnikau, a Belarusian national, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for running the Ransom Cartel ransomware-as-a-service operation.
- The scheme targeted at least 18 companies between 2021 and 2023, using stolen credentials and cryptocurrency mixers to launder ransom payments.
- Silnikau faces an unresolved second prosecution in New Jersey related to the Angler Exploit Kit malvertising scheme.
A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced Maksim Silnikau to 16 years in prison on August 5 for creating and operating Ransom Cartel, a ransomware-as-a-service business he established in 2021. The Justice Department stated that between 2021 and 2023, the conspiracy attacked at least 18 companies, including firms in California, New York, and Nebraska, as well as others abroad.
Silnikau, a 40-year-old Belarusian national operating under the handles “J.P. Morgan,” “lansky,” and “xxx,” built the enterprise around affiliate access rather than conducting intrusions himself. He provided the locking software, purchased stolen credentials from initial access brokers, and ran a hidden panel where affiliates monitored attacks, negotiated with victims, and split proceeds through cryptocurrency mixers.
The sentence exceeds the 13 years and seven months handed to Yaroslav Vasinskyi in 2024 for over 2,500 REvil attacks. However, it resolves only half of Silnikau’s legal troubles, as a second federal prosecution in New Jersey remains unresolved, with two co-defendants still at large.
Prosecutors charged seven counts in Virginia and announced convictions on three, though the announcement carries no restitution or forfeiture figure. The indictment reveals Silnikau ran the operation under another name from May 2021, renamed it “Ransom Cartel” in late 2021, and then attempted to publicize it on security news sites.
The indictment preserves an advertisement posted to a Russian-language cybercrime forum on May 4, 2021, seeking access to corporate networks outside the Commonwealth of Independent States. The ad screened by victim size and set revenue requirements from $10 million, with prices starting at $100.
The last charged act occurred on April 25, 2023, when Silnikau negotiated terms for supplying computers to be locked, three months before his July 2023 arrest that prosecutors say stalled Ransom Cartel’s growth. Poland extradited him to the United States in August 2024.
Meanwhile, Unit 42‘s 2022 analysis found the operators held the original REvil source code but not the obfuscation engine, speculating only that the groups were linked. Silnikau was separately charged in New Jersey alongside Volodymyr Kadariya and Andrei Tarasov for the Angler Exploit Kit malvertising scheme.
The Secret Service still lists Tarasov
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