French authorities arrested a Russian national in Paris for allegedly helping the Hive ransomware gang with laundering their victims' ransom payments.
"New arrest in the Hive ransomware affair: after the international search in January to dismantle this network of hackers constituting a serious threat, the Judicial Police arrested in Paris an individual suspected of having laundered money from these cyber attacks," the French National Police
said (automated translation).
The suspect was apprehended after the French Anti-Cybercrime Office (OFAC) linked him to digital wallets that received millions of U.S. dollars from suspicious sources based on his activity on social networks.
Police agents also seized €570,000 worth of cryptocurrency assets when they detained the 40-year-old suspect and Cyprus resident on December 5, as first reported by
LeMagIT.
"At the same time, the full cooperation with Europol, Eurojust and the Cypriot authorities made it possible to search his home in a Cypriot seaside resort, thus providing important elements of investigation,"
said Nicolas Guidoux, a Deputy Director in the French Ministry of the Interior.
"On December 9, 2023, he was referred to the specialized prosecutor's office of the Paris judicial court."
This comes after
Hive ransomware's Tor websites were seized in January in an international law enforcement operation after the FBI infiltrated the gang's servers in late July 2022.
