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Internet robber sentenced
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February 24, 1998: 9:09 p.m. ET
Levin may not face additional jail time for first known 'Net bank robbery
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) -- A 30-year-old computer wiz from St. Petersburg, Russia, was sentenced Tuesday to 36 months in prison for orchestrating the first publicly-known bank robbery over the Internet.
Vladimir Levin had pled guilty last month to stealing millions of dollars from Citibank in 1994.
Originally, Levin stood accused of stealing $10 million by gaining access to an internal bank computer system and making unauthorized wire transfers of funds. But in his plea agreement, Levin admitted to only one count of conspiracy to defraud Citibank and to stealing only $3.7 million.
Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York laid out their case in the indictment.
Between June and August of 1994, Levin accessed the Citibank computer, user identification codes, and passwords belonging to bank customers. On 18 occasions, prosecutors alleged, Levin transferred funds from these accounts maintained at Citibank in New York to accounts he and his co-conspirators controlled in Finland, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany and Israel. Levin's co-conspirators later withdrew or attempted to withdraw the funds.
Four of Levin's accomplices have previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
Levin was arrested by British police at an airport outside London in March 1995. He fought extradition for 30 months before being delivered into U.S. custody last September.
In addition to his prison sentence, Judge Michael Mukasey ordered Levin to make restitution to Citibank for $240,015.
The judge also recommended that Levin be given credit for 30 months spent in a British jail. The decision to accept that recommendation is left to the Bureau of Prisons.
He will automatically be given credit for the nearly six months already spent in a U.S. jail.
"We are pleased with the work of the FBI and law enforcement around the world who helped with this case," said Citibank spokeswoman Amy Dates.
"We are confident the changes we've made to our computer system are state of the art technology," she said. Dates noted that all the customers who had their funds illegally withdrawn had been reimbursed.
Levin, a biochemistry graduate who spoke no English, is said to have engineered the hacker crime with his laptop computer.
Last December, the G-7 nations and Russia agreed to jointly intensify cooperative efforts to crack down on computer crime.
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Citibank
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