RBS hacker walks free from Russian court

One of the team behind a hacking heist that saw millions of dollars siphoned from Royal Bank of Scotland's RBS WorldPay branch has walked free from a Russian court.

Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, was given a six-year suspended sentence for his part in the scam, in which RBS lost $9m (£5.8m) in just 12 hours. Pleshchuk agreed to name others in the plot, and will pay $8.9m (£5.76m) in restitution.

"This is not a regular crime but a cyber crime, and Pleshchuk did not really have a full understanding of the damage he was causing," said his lawyer Yuriy Novolodsky, according to a Bloomberg report. "He pleaded guilty and is fully collaborating with authorities."

Pleshchuk and six others, Russians Oleg Covelin and a person known only as 'Hacker 3', and Estonians Igor Grudijev, Ronald Tsoi, Evelin Tsoi and Mihhail Jevgenov, had organised a sophisticated scam to hack into RBS WorldPay encryption systems.

The team obtained 44 fake debit account codes and used them to print multiple cards which were used to rob 2,100 ATMs in 280 cities in the US, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada in just 12 hours, according to the US Department of Justice.

"In November 2008, in just one day, an American credit card processor was hacked in perhaps the most sophisticated and organised computer fraud attack ever conducted. Almost exactly one year later, the leaders of this attack were charged," said US attorney Sally Quillian Yates of the Northern District of Georgia.

Pleshchuk is still wanted in the US for the crime, but is unlikely to face further prosecution since Russia does not have an extradition treaty with the US.