Spain extradites suspect thought to be spam kingpin to America
3 Feb 2018 5:20 PM GMT
Madrid: Spain has extradited to the United States a Russian citizen who is suspected of being one of the world's most notorious spammers.
Pyotr Levashov, a 37-year-old from St Petersburg, was arrested in April while vacationing with his family in Barcelona.
US authorities had asked for him to be detained on charges of fraud and unauthorized interception of electronic communications. He was scheduled to be arraigned late Friday in a federal courthouse in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where a grand jury indicted him last year.
A statement from Spain's National Police said officers handed Levashov over to US marshals on Friday. The extradition was approved in October by Spain's National Court, which rejected a counter-extradition request from Russia.
The Russian Embassy in Washington didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Authorities in the US say they have linked Levashov to a series of powerful botnets, or networks of hijacked computers, that were capable of pumping out billions of spam emails.
Next Story
