Editing Vladimir Levin (hacker) (section)

== The commonly known story ==

At the time, the [[mass media]] claimed he was a [[mathematician]] and had a degree in [[biochemistry]] from [[Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology]].

According to the coverage, in 1994 Levin accessed the accounts of several large corporate customers of Citibank via their dial-up wire transfer service (Financial Institutions Citibank Cash Manager) and transferred funds to accounts set up by accomplices in Finland, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany and Israel.

Three of his accomplices were arrested attempting to withdraw funds in [[Tel Aviv]], [[Rotterdam]] and [[San Francisco]]. Interrogation of his accomplices directed investigations to Levin, who was then working as a computer programmer for [[St. Petersburg, Russia|St. Petersburg]]-based computer company AO Saturn. However, Russia's Constitution prohibits the extradition of its citizens to foreign countries.

In March 1995, Levin was lured to London<ref>{{cite news |title=A Byte Out of History: $10 Million Hack |url=https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/a-byte-out-of-history-10-million-hack |work=Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=2014}}</ref> and apprehended at London's [[Stansted Airport]] by [[Scotland Yard]] officers when making an interconnecting flight from [[Moscow]]. Levin's lawyers fought against extradition to the U.S., but their appeal was rejected by the [[House of Lords]] in June 1997.

Levin was delivered into U.S. custody in September 1997 and was tried in the [[United States District Court for the Southern District of New York]]. In his plea agreement, he admitted to only one count of [[Criminal conspiracy|conspiracy]] to [[Fraud|defraud]] and to [[Theft|stealing]] US$3.7 million. In February 1998, he was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail, and ordered to make a [[restitution]] of US$240,015. Citibank claimed that all but US$400,000 of the stolen US$10.7 million had been recovered.

After the compromise of their system, Citibank updated their systems to use Dynamic Encryption Card, a physical authentication token. However, it was not revealed how Levin had gained access to the relevant account access details. Following his arrest in 1995, anonymous members of [[Hacker (computer security)|hacking]] groups based in St. Petersburg claimed that Levin did not have the technical abilities to break into Citibank's systems, that they had cultivated access to systems deep within the bank's network, and that these access details had been sold to Levin for $100.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}