Published: 19:51 BST, 20 June 2022 | Updated: 19:59 BST, 20 June 2022

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has dismantled the infrastructure of what it described as a Russian botnet consisting of millions of hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices. 

According to the DoJ, RSOCKS was operating as a proxy service, but instead of offering customers IP addresses legitimately leased from internet service providers (ISPs), the firm was offering IP addresses that had been assigned to hacked devices. 

The DoJ said that together with law enforcement partners in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK it has “dismantled” the infrastructure of RSOCKS “which hacked millions of computers and other electronic devices around the world”.

The service was available for cybercriminals to use to conceal the source of their activity, which included credential attacks on login web pages.  

“It is believed that the users of this type of proxy service were conducting large scale attacks against authentication services, also known as credential stuffing, and anonymizing themselves when accessing compromised social media accounts, or sending malicious email, such as phishing messages,” the DOJ said. 

RSOCKS’s website advertising its services and prices has now been replaced with a message that it has been seized by the FBI, but previously customers could buy access to a pool of RSOCKS proxies from $30 a day for 2,000 proxies to $200 per day for 9,000 proxies, according to the DoJ.

Once purchased, the customer could download a list of IP addresses and ports associated with one or more of the botnet’s backend servers. The customer could then route malicious internet traffic through the compromised victim devices to mask the true source of the traffic, the DOJ said.

RSOCKS operators allegedly built the proxy service by brute forcing passwords for IoT devices, many of which are put into service with default passwords or are protected by weak passwords. 

The operators initially targeted IoT devices to build the botnet but later expanded to compromising Android devices and computers. Victims of the botnet included a university, hotel, a television studio, and an electronics manufacturers. Other victims were home businesses and individuals. 

The DOJ revealed it had dismantled the botnet as it unsealed a search warrant affidavit in the Southern District of California. 

“This operation disrupted a highly sophisticated Russia-based cybercrime organization that conducted cyber intrusions in the United States and abroad,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy. 

“Our fight against cybercriminal platforms is a critical component in ensuring cybersecurity and safety in the United States. The actions we are announcing today are a testament to the FBI’s ongoing commitment to pursuing foreign threat actors in collaboration with our international and private sector partners.”

The DoJ in April announced it had disrupted a botnet controlled by the Russian Federation’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) that consisted of thousands of infected WatchGuard and Asus firewall devices. 

A 15-year-old boy was shot to death and three adults, including a police officer, were wounded after a musical event lacking a permit erupted into chaos on a District of Columbia street Sunday night, police said.

The wounded police officer and the other adults were recovering at hospitals, Metropolitan Police Chief Robert J. Contee III told reporters at the scene of the shooting. The incident took place near 14th and U Streets NW, about 2 miles north of the White House.

Social media had promoted a free music event known as Moechella and several hundred people were gathering in the area around 6 p.m., Contee said. Police arrived to assist the crowd and people stayed mostly to the sidewalks as music played from a truck, he said.

In the hours that followed a fight broke out, and then an incident of an undetermined nature caused people to scatter, Contee said. Police shut down the gathering, he said, because the event appeared to have become unsafe.

Several people were hurt in the rush to leave the area and were being assisted by public safety first responders when the shooting occurred, Contee said. He said the events occurred between 6 and 8:30 p.m.

A handgun was recovered from one of the victims but not the firearm believed to have caused the death and injuries, Contee said. No police fired their weapons and there was no exchange of gunfire, he said.

The police chief said officials would be speaking to event organizers and considering what legal action could be taken because the event lacked a permit.

“We will certainly want to make sure that people are held accountable when they hold unpermitted events in our city,” he said.

In two other incidents, a 16-year-old girl was killed in Southeast D.C. and a 19-year-old was shot and killed while sitting in a residential neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia on Saturday night, WUSA-TV reported.

An analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ)  showed Washington, D.C. reported a 16% increase in homicide rates in 2021.

First published on June 20, 2022 / 9:03 AM

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Palaces, yachts and vineyards reportedly provided to Vladimir Putin by friends and oligarchs can today be linked to what appears to be an informal network holding assets worth more than $4.5bn (£3.7bn).

A digital paper trail appears to suggest that an array of holiday homes and other assets reportedly used by the Russian president, which according to available records belong to or have been owned by separate individuals, companies and charities, are linked through a common email domain name, LLCInvest.ru.

Putin diagram

A snapshot of leaked email exchanges from last September further suggests directors and administrators associated with some of the separate entities that hold and manage these assets have discussed day-to-day business problems as if they were part of a single organisation.

An anti-corruption expert in Russia, who requested anonymity given the political situation in Moscow, said the findings raised questions as to whether there was a level of “common management”.

“LLCInvest looks most of all like a cooperative, or an association, in which its members can exchange benefits and property,” they suggested.

For nearly two decades, Putin has been accused of secretly accumulating vast wealth through proxies, fuelled by a series of disclosures in leaks such as the Pandora papers about the fortunes of those closest to him.

Sergey Kolesnikov, a businessman, claimed 10 years ago that he had been behind a scheme that allowed a group of Russia’s top oligarchs to pool billions of rubles into a type of “investment fund” for the benefit of Putin, who was then serving as prime minister. The claims were denied and Kolesnikov fled from Russia.

Last month the UK government contrasted Putin’s “lavish lifestyle” with official Russian records which listed “modest assets” including a small flat in St Petersburg, two Soviet-era cars from the 1950s, a trailer and a small garage.

Alexei Navalny has claimed this £1bn palace was built for Putin’s personal use in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea. Photograph: AP

After a year-long investigation, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Russian-language news site Meduza have identified 86 companies and not-for-profit organisations whose representatives appear to use the common LLCinvest domain name, often alongside corporate email accounts.

Claims of a secret presidential fortune are denied and a chain of ownership leading to Putin has not been identified. A Kremlin spokesperson said: “The president of the Russian Federation is in no way connected or affiliated with the objects and organisations you named.”

Villa Sellgren is owned by Sergey Rudnov, the son of a childhood friend of Putin. Photograph: Navalny.com

According to OCCRP and Meduza, assets linked to organisations or the corporate structures around them in which the LLCinvest.ru email domain appears to have been in use, include:

A £1bn palace which Alexei Navalny has claimed was built for Putin’s personal use in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea. The billionaire oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, who is under EU and US sanctions, has claimed ownership of the property. Corporate records held by the Spark database in Russia stated as of June that the property belongs to a firm called Kompleks whose parent company is Binom. The company director at Binom until July last year appears to have a registered LLCInvest.ru email domain. The LLCinvest.ru address remains cited on Spark, Russia’s largest company database, as a contact.

Acres of vineyards around the Gelendzhik palace. Navalny has claimed the wineries were a Putin “hobby” that had got out of control. Vineyards surrounding the palace belong to a not-for-profit founded by two Putin associates, Gennady Timchenko and Vladimir Kolbin, both of whom are also under western sanctions. Kolbin and others associated with the vineyards appear to have LLCInvest.ru email accounts.

The Igora ski resort in the Leningrad oblast where the wedding of Putin’s daughter took place in 2013. According to land records, it is owned by Ozon, a company in which Putin’s friend, Bank Rossiya’s chairman and largest shareholder Yuri Kovalchuk, who is under western sanctions, has had a large stake. The LLCInvest.ru email account is a contact on the Spark records of Ozon’s parent company, Relax.

A villa north of St Petersburg, known by locals as “Putin’s Dacha”. The Villa Sellgren was owned by Oleg Rudnov, a childhood friend of Putin’s, and inherited by his son Sergey Rudnov, through a company called North. Rudnov appears to use LLCinvest.ru email addresses, according to the Spark records.

A wood-clad building north of St Petersburg known as the Fisherman’s Hut. Emails leaked from a construction firm suggest that three different companies using the domain name owned different parcels of land around the complex, while a fourth LLCInvest entity – a nonprofit organisation named Revival of Maritime Traditions – managed the construction. That same foundation, recently placed under western sanctions, owns two yachts, Shellest and Nega, said by the US Treasury to be linked to Putin.

Russsia assets map

The $4.5bn in assets held by LLCInvest entities includes large cash deposits. Two not-for-profit foundations, co-founded by Timchenko and Kolbin, which according to Spark corporate records appear to use the domain name, have significant funds at their disposal. The Development of Agrarian Initiatives had 17bn rubles (£248m) in its deposit account at the end of 2020 while the Development of an Effective Investment Market held more than 20bn rubles (£292m) in long-term deposits and almost 5bn rubles (£73m) in short-term deposits at the end of 2020, according to publicly available accounts.

LLCinvest is not a standard email provider open to the public such as Yahoo but a domain on a server owned by Moskomsvyaz, a telecoms company which has close links to Bank Rossiya. The St Petersburg bank is under western sanctions and described by the US Treasury as “the personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation”. Rossiya has also been described as ‘Putin’s bank’ for its role in allegedly carrying out the Russian leader’s bidding. The Kremlin has denied any such links or influence.

The discovery of the common email domain was made through analysis of leaked metadata from Moskomsvyaz servers, which appears to show the names of senders and recipients of LLCinvest.ru emails, the subject matter and time of correspondence. This was cross checked with open source records and a separate leak of the content of some full messages.

The yacht Shellest is owned by the nonprofit organisation Revival of Maritime Traditions.

Moskomsvyaz and all but one of the individuals who appear to have used LLCInvest.ru email addresses, did not reply to requests for comment. It is unclear as to the purpose of the common email service, or the motivation for the apparent cooperation on staffing and logistical issues.

There is no suggestion that all the users of the LLCInvest.ru are involved in managing assets that have been linked in reports to Putin. Only one man who uses a LLCinvest.ru email account in his role as a director of multiple companies, spoke on the phone when called. He claimed ignorance of the nature of his work.“I’m a humble employee and mind my own business,” he said when questioned. “I only sign papers. You know how sometimes homeless people are registered as directors of a company. I’m not homeless but I sign the papers like they do without going into the details.”“If my company was part of a big holding, I wouldn’t know,” he added. The man’s identity is being withheld for his own safety.

Following a yearlong investigation into narcotics and gun trafficking in Queens and Brooklyn, 13 individuals were arrested in Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx during the past two days on charges contained in two indictments that are unsealed and two criminal court complaints that were filed today. During the long-term investigation, an undercover officer purchased large amounts of fentanyl, cocaine and heroin including fentanyl pressed into counterfeit prescription pills with a street value worth over $3 million. In total,15 kilograms of cocaine and 12 kilograms of fentanyl mixtures were seized along with an assault weapon and three firearms, two of which were allegedly sold by accused ringleader NELSON CRUZ who is charged with Operating as a Major Trafficker.

Bridget G. Brennan, New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, Frank Tarantino III, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) New York Division, New York City Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell and New York State Police Superintendent Kevin P. Bruen announced the arrests today in conjunction of the unsealing of two indictments.

The investigation was conducted by New York Drug Enforcement Task Force (NYDETF) Group T-23 and the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Investigators Unit. Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz reviewed and submitted for court authorized wire taps during the investigation. NYDETF Group T-23 is comprised of agents and officers with the DEA New York Division, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the New York State Police.

The indictments were filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor (SNP). One indictment charges CRUZ with Operating as a Major Trafficker, Criminal Sale and Possession of a Firearm, Conspiracy and Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance in the First Degree. His four alleged co-conspirators are charged with top narcotics felonies. JOSE DE SALA GARCIA and JOSEPH SPATOLA also face firearm charges.

The second indictment, which focuses on traffickers primarily operating in Brooklyn, contains charges of Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance in the First and Second Degrees. In addition, two criminal court complaints charging CRUZ and four other individuals were filed today in connection events that occurred on June 15 and 16, including the delivery of cocaine to a Bronx location and search warrants conducted in Queens.

Beginning approximately one year ago, defendant MANUEL SURIEL allegedly began selling cocaine at a restaurant in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. SURIEL subsequently introduced a co-representative of alleged major trafficker CRUZ and other alleged narcotics traffickers who conducted narcotics sales in Brooklyn and Queens.

Beginning October 8, 2021, defendant SURIEL and a co-representative of CRUZ allegedly conducted a series of sales with an undercover officer at locations in Queens and Brooklyn, including the first fentanyl sale charged in the case. On October 14, 2021, SURIEL and the co-conspirator allegedly provided 100 grams of fentanyl in exchange for $5,100 in the parking lot of a Target department store in College Point, Queens. By January 2022, the focus of the investigation shifted away from Brooklyn to CRUZ’s organization, based in the Richmond Hill/South Ozone area of Queens. Over time, CRUZ established a pattern of providing large quantities of fentanyl on consignment, with several sales in the $10,000-$16,000 range.

A wiretap investigation revealed that CRUZ allegedly conspired with JOSE DESALA-GARCIA, MANUEL SURIEL, JOSEPH SPATOLA and others to possess, sell and distribute narcotics in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and elsewhere. The investigation revealed that cocaine had been obtained from sources of supply in Puerto Rico and fentanyl from Mexico.

The first gun sale in the investigation occurred on February 18, 2022, with the purchase of a semi-automatic pistol from CRUZ and DESALA-GARCIA for $1,100. The sale took place across from a residence located on 130th street in Queens. On March 9, 2022, CRUZ sold another assault rifle for $2,500. Narcotics sales with CRUZ then allegedly continued through May 2022.

Beginning on June 7, 2022, agents and officers with NYDETF Group T-23 and the Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Investigators Unit arrested 13 individuals. SPATOLA and PATRICK HARRISON were arrested on June 7, after members of the NYDETF Group T-23 conducted a surveillance operation in the vicinity of Bay 28th Street in Brooklyn, and observed SPATOLA park his car, and walk away with a Target bag found to contain one kilogram of cocaine and 238 alleged fentanyl pills. HARRISON was inside the vehicle.

A court authorized search of SPATOLA’s Queens residence, resulted in the seizure a Glock 23 handgun, a Glock magazine with .40 caliber ammunition cartridges, and a box of additional rounds of ammunition, as well as additional quantities of cocaine.

On June 15, 2022, the investigation culminated in arrests outside of a residential building on Morris Avenue in the Soundview area of the Bronx. Members of NYDETF T-23 observed an undercover police officer meet with defendant CRUZ, who arrived at the location in a white Chevrolet Silverado pick-up truck. Moments later defendants DELGADO, GENAO, and AGRAMONTE arrived in a grey Dodge Ram pick-up truck. Police observed CRUZ instruct GENAO to hand a weighted black duffle bag to the undercover officer, which was found to contain 9.5 kilograms of cocaine. Defendants CRUZ, GENAO, DELGADO, and AGRAMONTE were charged in a separate criminal court complaint.

Agents and officers then conducted a series of additional court-authorized searches at two locations in the Richmond Hill area of Queens. In a garage located on 108th street, police recovered over 12 kilograms of fentanyl and heroin, approximately four kilograms of cocaine, and 10,0000 counterfeit fentanyl pills imprinted to look like 30 mg oxycodone, Adderall, and other prescription drugs.

A search warrant was obtained at a second location on 130th street where officers and agents recovered a half kilogram of cocaine on a chair in the middle of the kitchen area of the first-floor apartment. In the front bedroom of the apartment, there was approximately $30,000 and a money counter seized. In the back bedroom, police seized a 9mm black Taurus handgun. In the apartment, defendant ELIANNY JIMENEZ DE LA CRUZ was arrested and charged with Criminal Possession of a Controlled substance in the First and Third Degree and Criminal Possession of a Firearm. NELSON CRUZ is also charged in connection with cocaine and the handgun recovered in the apartment.

Police estimate a total of 15 kilograms of cocaine, 12 kilograms of heroin and fentanyl mixtures were seized from all three locations.

Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan thanked Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, and commended SNP’s Special Investigations Bureau and Investigators Unit, the DEA New York Division, the New York City Police Department and the New York State Police for their work on the investigation.

Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan said “Gun violence is New York City’s number one public safety concern, and at the same time drug overdoses are claiming more lives than ever before. This investigation exposes the close link between drug and gun trafficking. Close collaboration between federal, state and city law enforcement is key to preventing dangerous weapons and deadly drugs from taking precious lives.”

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said, “The combination of illegal guns and drugs – especially involving dangerous substances such as fentanyl – places entire communities at risk for fatal drug overdoses and senseless gun violence. Queens County has seen an alarming increase in fatal overdoses since the pandemic began, and majority of those deaths are attributed to the same drugs recovered as part of this investigation by the Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Office. We will not stand for those who bring deadly weapons into our neighborhoods and sell poison on our streets. My Office will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to make sure that those who deliberately put our residents and families in harm’s way are held accountable for their actions.”

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said, “These indictments underscore our determination to reclaim our streets from drug dealers and other offenders who endanger the safety and degrade the quality of life of our communities. I commend Special Narcotics Prosecutor Brennan and all of our law enforcement partners for their hard work in putting this case together.”

DEA Special Agent in Charge Frank Tarantino III said, “Dismantling fentanyl trafficking organizations is our priority because out of all illegal drugs, fentanyl is killing the most people,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Tarantino. “This investigation highlights how drug traffickers are armed and dangerous, selling drugs and guns on our city streets. As a result of tireless efforts by the members of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, NYC Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor, Queens District Attorney’s Office and Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, this drug and gun network has been shut down.”

Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said, “This long-term investigation shows that the NYPD and its law enforcement partners are relentless in arresting and prosecuting those who peddle illegal drugs and guns on our city’s streets,” said Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell. “The criminality outlined in today’s indictments, including reckless drug dealing by accused trafficker Nelson Cruz, is a form of wanton depravity that the NYPD will never stop fighting against. I want to thank the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor, the DEA, the State Police, prosecutors in the Brooklyn and Queens district attorney’s offices, and all of our investigators for their outstanding work in this important case.”

State Police Superintendent Kevin P. Bruen said, “Thanks to the hard work of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force and the Special Narcotics Prosecutor, we have disrupted an organization that was selling dangerous illegal drugs and firearms in New York City. The State Police and our partners will continue to aggressively pursue those who endanger our communities with their illegal activities.”

The charges and allegations are merely accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.