"months of planning a visit to him in a Colorado prison, I hear the door click open before I see him walk into the room. I stand up ready to give this former cyber-crime kingpin a professional hello. But, like a cheeky cartoon character, he pokes his head around a pillar with a giant grin on his face and winks. Tank, whose real name is Vyacheslav Penchukov, climbed to the top of the cyber-underworld not so much with technical wizardry, but with criminal charm."
""There were snipers on the roof and the police put me on the ground and handcuffed me and put a bag on my head on the street in front of my kids. They were scared," he recalls with annoyance. He is still bitter about how he was arrested, arguing that it was over the top. His thousands of victims around the world would strongly disagree with him:"
Vyacheslav Penchukov, known as Tank, rose to lead prominent cybercrime gangs by using personal charm and high-level contacts rather than purely technical skill. He spent nearly a decade on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and led two separate criminal groups across distinct periods of cybercrime. Those gangs stole tens of millions of pounds and caused harm to thousands of victims globally. Swiss authorities arrested Penchukov in 2022 in a dramatic operation involving snipers, handcuffs, and a hooded arrest in front of his children. Penchukov remains bitter about the manner of his capture.
Read at www.bbc.com
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