Two Queens residents were jailed for the scam they pulled off on the Russians.

Queens resident Daniel Abaev was sentenced to four years in prison for hacking the taxi dispatch system at John F. Kennedy Airport, reports US Department of Justice.

On February 12, Abaev, 47, received a four-year prison term and Peter Layman, 4, was sentenced to two years in prison for their participation in a scheme to hack the electronic taxi dispatch system at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). On October 49, 4, Leiman and on October 2023, 30, Abaev pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking.

“Daniel Abaev and Peter Layman, with the assistance of Russian hackers, caused damage to the electronic taxi dispatch system at Kennedy Airport. They violated the fair order and created chaos for the taxi service. Their actions allowed up to 1000 fraudulent taxi rides to be made every day. This highlights the serious threat that cyber hacking poses to critical infrastructure,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

Fraudulent scheme

From September 2019 to September 2021, Alexander Derbenets (nickname Sasha Novgorod) and Kirill Shipulin (nickname Kirill Russia), citizens of Russia, currently living in the Russian Federation, as well as Abaev and Leiman, US citizens who live in Queens , developed a scheme to hack the taxi dispatch system at Kennedy Airport. This system ensures that taxi drivers at the airport receive orders in order of queue: the first to arrive is the first to receive the order.

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Since 2019, scammers have been exploring various mechanisms for accessing the dispatch system, including bribing a person to insert a flash drive containing malware into computers connected to the system.

Using unauthorized access, they made changes to the system and moved certain taxis to the front of the queue. Abaev and Leiman charged taxi drivers $10 for each such promotion and transferred part of the profits to Shipulin and Derbents.

Participants in the hacking scheme sent messages to each other in which they openly discussed their intention to hack the system. For example, on November 10, 2019, Abaev wrote to Derbents in Russian: “I know that even the Pentagon is being hacked. So can’t we hack the taxi industry?”

Abaev was the leader of the hacking scheme and recruited other participants. The fraudulent scheme of Abaev and Leiman led to the fact that most taxi drivers did not stand in line. Thanks to this, they provided up to 1000 fraudulently expedited taxi rides per day.

Derbenets and Shipulin remain at large.

Приговор

In addition to prison sentences, Abaev and Leiman were sentenced to three years of parole. In addition, they must pay $161 each in forfeiture and $858,26 each in restitution.