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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plotu" data-source="post: 450" data-attributes="member: 5">Ordinary migrantAt first glance, Tokarenko looked like an ordinary migrant building a new life in the West. In 2013, he received Ukrainian citizenship and changed his last name to Catana, and then moved to Alicante. The thin, short man lived with his Ukrainian wife and son, but he didn't look like he was trying to fit in — he didn't learn Spanish or go to the famous San Juan Beach in Alicante. He was much more active online, often spending the entire night on his laptop.Investigators gradually began to reconstruct the picture of how Tokarenko-Katana and three accomplices introduced Carbanak into banks: one sent phishing emails, the second was a database expert, and the third "cleaned up digital traces" of crimes. Katana also dealt with the most important and complex issue: he conducted intelligence in banking systems and "shuffled" cash flows within the network. "This guy is in a different league, he's like Rafael Nadal in tennis. Few people in the world are capable of doing what he did," says Carlos Yust, head of the cybercrime division of the Spanish National Police.But as soon as the police began to make progress, the group "opened a second front": through the same phishing emails, they began to inject Cobalt malware into banking systems — a virus based on the Cobalt Strike program, which cybersecurity specialists use to hack their own systems in search of vulnerabilities. With the help of two viruses, the group could withdraw $12 million at a time from banks. The quickness of the criminals was sobering: "Sometimes the investigation seemed to be going well, and sometimes it seemed that we were at a dead end," recalls Fernando Ruiz.Captured mulesCriminals were let down by the most obvious vulnerability — people. In 2016, the police managed to catch "money mules" in Taiwan who took money from ATMs – after one of them lost his credit card at the ATM. In the iPhone of one of the accomplices, in addition to numerous photos of cash, there was an electronic correspondence with the person who managed the operation. All these tracks led to Alicante.Investigators say that even after catching the "mules", Katana did not stop. In early 2017, after he took control of bank accounts in Russia and Kazakhstan, about $4 million was withdrawn from ATMs in Madrid. It was a mistake — Just was able to get approval to tap Katana's phones. Investigators were convinced that the hacker was no longer interested in money: he laundered huge sums through cryptocurrencies and built a mansion in Alicante. He just liked hacking into bank security systems.The wiretapping paid off — earlier this year, the police found out that Katana and her accomplices were going to release a more modern version of Carbanak. Russian law enforcement officers really did not like that the Spaniards just watched the Katana for two years — during this time, 1 billion rubles were stolen from Russian banks with the help of Cobalt. On March 6, more than a dozen armed police officers finally broke into Katana's apartment. They confiscated the laptop and other evidence. In addition to jewelry and two BMW's in Katana's name, the police found 15 thousand bitcoins – about $162 million at the exchange rate at that time.+++In Spain, an investigation has been completed into the case of hacker Denis Tokarenko, better known as Denis Catana, who is accused of helping launder funds of a Russian organized criminal group through bitcoin. This is reported by local media.According to the case file, the criminal syndicate operated in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante. One of its members, Maxim Khakimov, recruited Katana to advise them on buying bitcoins and ways to hide illegal income.The hacker recommended the use of digital assets due to the "lack of state control," the court was told.Denis Katana was born in Ukraine and has lived in Spain since 2014.For the first time, he was detained in 2018 on charges of infecting ATMs around the world with malware for automatic cash withdrawal. Money was collected locally by "mules" who laundered it, including through bitcoins.Even then, Katana was familiar with Khakimov, who, through his lawyer, transferred funds to the cybercriminal behind bars, and also offered to hire killers to deal with his debts.In total, more than 15,000 BTC are stored on Katana's cryptocurrency wallets. However, the judge mentioned only one of them with a balance of 5,000 BTC (~€55 million at the time of the criminal operations).</blockquote>

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