$169 million in credit card fraud.

I raise you with the biggest crypto exchange ponzi (so far) being run by the son of two Stanford lawyers and law teachers (dad teaching tax laws and mom teaching ethics, while having none). Well connected people to the US political elite, donating tens of millions to US political candidates.

All the while having one of the most respected publication in the US (maybe not so much respected anymore now) actively participating in the scheme.

Crypto is one of the best methods available to Russia to circumvent sanctions and turn their capabilities to hard currencies. This is true whether we're talking about acquiring money by running frauds internationally, or finding ways to be paid for cybercrimes like ransomware.

Rather bigger amounts of defrauding are possible for Americans who figure out how to directly access the American financial system. That doesn't change the way that it is being used by Russia. And the Russian use case is far more relevant to this story - they are undoubtably involved in a shockingly large fraction of the crypto money launderers that were registered in Estonia.

The situation isn't clear yet, but it looks like the biggest problems with sanctions is that China is an advanced manufacturer that isn't part of NATO. Everyone outside of NATO seems to be calm enough about the war.

They are.

Converting crypto to hard currency outside of Russia without tripping flags is certainly possible, but has all the same problems of using hard currency while under sanctions in the first place.

However before 2022 it was just as much wealthy Russians doing it to put their money beyond the reach of the Russian state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank_money_laundering_s...

That's like saying that US-made guns fueling cartel violence is 'America doing something to earn some extra cash, and to hurt Mexico'. It's ridiculous, and not accurate.

It's just economically-rational actors trying to make money, and taking advantage of legislative and enforcement arbitrage. This kind of arbitrage exists any time two different systems interact with eachother. Foreigners, and foreign criminals are not some weird hive mind in cahoots with their state.

Is it? Any evidence for this?

It was my understanding that they use gold: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/03/turkey-banker-...

But I know that crypto is somewhat important for North Korea

But ransomware gangs are overwhelmingly Russian, and overwhelmingly use crypto as their payment channel. It is far from the first kind of cybercrime to be overwhelmingly Russian, and disrupting payment channels is a good way to shut it down.

Read https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/ransomware-problem-bitc... for more on this. From one of the key figures in shutting down the Viagra spam problem. Which was also largely created by Russia.

Would it not be a little bit strange for Russian ransomware to provide an IBAN or a Money Wire to a bank? And Russian ransomware actors are, in contrast to North Korean and as far as I know, not state actors. (Russian Troll factories are not ransom ware)

So, for example, they take some interesting actions to avoid accidentally making the state unhappy. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/try-this-one-weird-trick... shows an amusing consequence of this.

But they also wind up with the same kinds of relationships with the state that the Wagner group did. And so we get things like https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa.... Russian military activity comes backed up with Russian cyberattacks that use all the same techniques, and presumably some of the same people, that Russian cybercriminals do.

And these attacks were not necessarily trivial. For example https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-behind-cyberatta... verifies that KA-SAT was taken offline. Starlink was also under constant cyberattack. I strongly suspect that Musk's unwillingness to allow Starlink in areas under Russian control, and unwillingness to allow Starlink to be used in offensive military attacks, are exactly to reduce how much he is a direct target of Russian activity.

Which one is that?

That's not a tabloid, you cannot force text on your audience and have their "what about" heard only by their relatives.

For Wirecard, Russia had a vested interest in influencing payment policies and happenings in the EU to help them with sanctions (probably at both a national level to keep trade moving, and at a personal level given that Russia's political elite bore the brunt of early sanctions). They were probably proactively engaging with him extensively from high levels.

Seleznev was just a big fish in the general area of "russian fraud and cybercrime abroad." I doubt the state had a personal interest in him like it did with Marsalek. Russia just generally has a policy of allowing Russian nationals to commit cybercrime abroad (as long as it doesn't affect them domestically) probably because it brings in foreign currency, keeps people employed and encourages development of those kinds of skills, and keeps hackers busy so they don't commit domestic cybercrime or do bad things to the government.

That said, Seleznev is directly cited as a factor from Russian media in the arrest of some FSB bigwigs per https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kevincollier/report-arr.... To me, if he were personally benefitting from direct help from the FSB like Marsalek this would not be retroactive to begin with, and that it took like 3y to accuse an FSB agent of helping the CIA with him (after the same agent got caught helping catch other hackers) also suggests this was less of a strategic priority and more of a "getting our hackers arrested is bad for business" thing.