Washington, Dec 3 (IANS) A 23-year-old Russian man, who has been indicted in the US for generating a third of spam emails worldwide, infected thousands of computers intending to sell counterfeit goods, including Viagra.
Oleg Y. Nikolaenko of Vidnoe, near Moscow, was arrested in Las Vegas last month and indicted for taking control of thousands of computers of unsuspecting victims and using them to send out billions of emails that hid their real source.
The messages were allegedly intended to sell, among other things, fake Rolex watches, herbal male enhancement concoctions and counterfeit prescription drugs, including Viagra, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Nikolaenko is expected to be arraigned Friday in a Milwaukee court in the US state of Wisconsin.
The case against Nikolaenko also involves investigators in Australia and New Zealand, at the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several private security companies.
A crucial link in the investigation came from an Aug 9, 2009, guilty plea in federal district court in Missouri by a man named Jody M. Smith. Smith admitted to selling counterfeit Rolex watches through spam emails and agreed to cooperate with authorities.
Nikolaenko was eventually linked to one of the spamming operations Smith employed. The operation, dubbed Mega-D by investigators, was capable of sending out 10 billion spam messages a day and accounted for as much as 32 percent of all spam, according to the court documents.
The complaint said Nikolaenko received $465,000 from a partner of Smith’s in one six-month period in 2007.
On Nov 4, 2009, FireEye, an internet-security company, crippled Nikolaenko’s network by persuading US-based internet providers to shut down Mega-D’s command and control computers.
FireEye determined that Mega-D used about 509,000 infected computers, including 136 computers in Wisconsin, to generate the spam, the complaint said. But Nikolaenko quickly got the network back up and running, the FBI said.
FBI agents arranged through one email sent out by Nikolaenko to purchase a male enhancement preparation and a package of Viagra.
They later retrieved the male enhancement drug from an undercover Milwaukee address, but the Viagra never arrived.
Christopher T. Van Wagner, Nikolaenko’s attorney, said he planned to put up a ‘rigorous defense’ in the court.
