Security News > 2022 > February > NetWalker ransomware affiliate sentenced to 80 months in prison
Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, a Canadian man charged by the US for his involvement in NetWalker ransomware attacks, was sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison after pleading guilty before an Ontario judge to multiple offenses linked to attacks on 17 Canadian victims.
The US Department of Justice said in January 2021 that Desjardins allegedly obtained more than $27.6 million after multiple successful attacks and extortion attempts since April 2020, when he first took up his new ransomware affiliate role.
"The Defendant admitted to investigators that over 1,200 Bitcoins related to his NetWalker malware activities passed through his e-wallet and were shared with his unindicted co-conspirators and the developer of the NetWalker ransomware," the judge said on Monday.
On January 27, 2021, when the US DOJ charged Desjardins, law enforcement from the USA and Bulgaria also seized dark websites associated with the Netwalker ransomware operation, including their Tor payment and data leak sites.
Netwalker was a Ransomware-as-a-Service operation that surfaced in late 2019, enlisting affiliates to deploy the ransomware in return for a 60-75% share of all ransom payments.
This ransomware operation was immensely profitable for all the threat actors involved, seeing that an August 2020 report estimated that they collected $25 million from victims within just five months.