Russian man pleads guilty to largest ever US cyber heist

A Russian man pleaded guilty last week to involvement in what authorities called the largest computer hacking scheme ever prosecuted in the United States, compromising more than 160 million credit card numbers and causing more than $300 million of losses.

Vladimir Drinkman, 34, admitted to conspiring to illegally access computers and conspiring to commit wire fraud before Chief Judge Jerome Simandle of the federal district court in Camden, New Jersey, federal prosecutors said.

Drinkman was accused of working with four other defendants as far back as 2003 to install “sniffers” designed to comb through and steal data from computer networks of financial companies, payment processors and retailers. Prosecutors said the defendants then used an array of computers to store and ultimately sell data they collected.