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Yesterday, Harju County Court took up the so-called Ghost Click case concerning a Tartu computer specialist and one-time head of Äripäev-awarded IT-company Rove Digital, Vladimir Tšaštšin, his mother Valentina Tšaštšina and Timur Gerassimenko, Dmitri Jegorov, and Konstantin Poltev.
Public prosecutor Piret Paukštys accuses all in money laundering and belonging to a criminal ring. The accused include, as legal persons, five companies linked with these same persons.
The case has attracted much attention due to the United States claiming these four men’s extradition by Estonia, to accuse them in computer crimes in New York Southern Circuit Court, and Tšaštšin also in money laundering.
Vladimir Tšaštšin may face, according to the complaint filed by his counsel to European Court of Human Rights, up to 115 years of imprisonment in USA. Two participants in the same story, not accused in Estonia, have already been extradited to USA.
The last year but one, FBI announced the men’s arrest in Estonia as their triumph, stating that their criminal scheme managed to infect four million computers all over the world with malware DNS Changer. Amongst others, NASA computers were also infected.
According US accusation, DNS Changer directed the infected computers to use extraordinary servers upon entering Internet, these being under the control of Mr Tšaštšin and his colleagues. The servers displayed advertisements unto the users’ screens, whereby Mr Tšaštšin earned millions of dollars.