I’m pleased to share with everyone some news about justice and retribution.
You may have heard of a certain character regarded as “Russia’s top hacker.” This is the so-called “Hell” hacker — a propaganda stooge serving the interests of the Presidential Administration and, I am convinced, working in partnership with the Russian security services and the Investigative Committee to hack the resources of people the Kremlin dislikes.
Three years ago, in the summer of 2012, this character hacked my email and Twitter for the second time. By an amazing coincidence, it happened right after my laptop and phone were seized during an unlawful search in connection with the “May 6 case” (the criminal case tied to the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protest in Moscow).
Before that, this “hacker” had broken into and stolen the accounts of many well-known people — Boris Akunin, Andrei Malgin, Valeria Novodvorskaya, Vladimir Pribylovsky, and others. For reasons I do not understand, this pro-Kremlin hacker was treated as an “internet legend” and even published his barely coherent notes on the website of the Civic Chamber.
“Hell” not only fully admitted his guilt in hacking my email, he also happily gave interviews to various trashy Kremlin media outlets working in partnership with him. He talked about what a principled exposer he was.
Over the next several months, Hell published archives of my email contents, accompanied by his own commentary — commentary alone that made it clear the “hacker” was seriously unwell.
The especially striking part is that this supposedly “principled hack” in fact became the basis for a whole series of criminal cases against me and others. Bastrykin’s crooks in the Investigative Committee took every fragment of correspondence that looked remotely like a discussion of some business matter and declared it fraud.
That is how the “Kirovles case” was born.
The “Yves Rocher case”.
The “distillery case,” which the media trumpeted for weeks and which even Putin commented on. For some reason, no one mentions that a couple of months ago it ended in the full acquittal of all suspects, and I myself was not even questioned — because the main thing is to say it on television.
There was plenty of other absurdity too. For example, the “moose case.” In the correspondence they found a photo of me on a hunting trip next to a dead moose, and the PROSECUTOR GENERAL’S OFFICE tried to question me several times, suspecting poaching!
All this time, what the “hacker” relished most was dwelling on just how notorious and elusive he was.
“Hacker number one,” “there is no evidence,” “they’ve been looking for me for years” — it conjures up the image of an elusive super-agent, a computer genius sitting in front of a dozen monitors, cracking the most complex passwords and codes.
From the very beginning, it was clear to us that there was no super-agent at all, but rather an ordinary internet con man, so we decided to bring this “elusive hacker” to justice in a very traditional way.
Three years ago, we carried out painstaking, meticulous, and horribly unpleasant work — gathering and organizing everything known about who this “hacker” really was. It was unpleasant because we had to reread, sort through, and translate this “hacker’s” endless graphomaniacal ravings.
He is a genuine pervert and a freak — anyone who reads his statements understands that immediately.
I apologize in advance for the content of the following screenshots from Hell’s blog, but without them the picture of him would be incomplete. Just so you understand what the person reading his blog had to go through:
The information that he was committing these crimes from German territory was confirmed.
In the autumn of 2012, we sent the material we had gathered to the German prosecutor’s office. As it turned out, we were not the first to complain about this “hacker” to German law enforcement. We had simply collected more information.
A few months later, the prosecutor’s office opened an investigation based on our complaint. A year later, at the end of 2013, a search was carried out at the “hacker’s” home in Bonn. During it, disks and other storage media were seized containing the contents of my email (and not only mine), yet more perverse essays signed by Hell, and much else besides pointing to a connection between the “elusive hacker” and a 41-year-old unemployed unmarried Russian man with strange proclivities living in Bonn.
Moreover, the person whose apartment was searched fully matched the fragmentary biographical details about Hell that had been known before. A criminal case has been opened against the “hacker,” which means he could face anything from a fine to a prison term if his guilt is proven.
For procedural reasons, we were advised not to publish for now the name of the person whom the German prosecutor’s office considers to be that hacker. For the same reasons, we are also not publishing his photograph, although it too is in the case file. But the wait will not be long. Anyone interested will be able to meet the “hacker” in person as soon as next week, at the first court hearing in this criminal case.
The Bonn prosecutor’s office granted me the status of co-plaintiff, and later required me to appear in court and testify. Required, specifically. I will, of course, do everything I can to attend one of the hearings in person.
I am not being allowed to leave the country, but a few days ago I once again applied for an international passport (they refused me before). Legally, there are no obstacles — people with suspended sentences may be issued a passport, or may be denied one, at the discretion of the “authorities.”
In any case, we will try to provide detailed coverage of what happens in court. So far, it is known that there will be at least two hearings. We are happy to invite journalists and anyone interested to attend them; they are open to the public.
Many thanks to everyone who spent their time tracking down and exposing this “hacker” — our efforts were not in vain. Thanks as well to the volunteers who bravely translated and rendered all of Hell’s nonsense into human language.