Estonia to extradite cyber crime suspects to US (Update)
Estonia on Thursday said it would extradite three citizens to the United States over an alleged multi-million dollar cyber scam that targeted such websites as iTunes and Netflix and the US tax service.
The government approved an earlier court ruling to extradite Timur Gerassimenko, Dmitri Jegorov and Konstantin Poltev to the US to stand trial for infecting millions of computers worldwide.
The trio were arrested along with three other men in Estonia in November 2011 during a joint US-Estonian police operation dubbed "Ghost Click".
The US indictment said they engaged in "click hijacking fraud", by directing users of infected computers to websites other than those chosen from search results.
From 2007 until their arrest the suspects developed and distributed malware that infected at least four million computers in around 100 countries, according to the Tallinn court.
It was used to redirect web traffic to sites controlled by the ring, which displayed revenue-generating ads in an online advertising scam that netted at least $14 million (11 million euros).
The alleged cyber crimes involved redirecting users who searched for high-traffic websites including iTunes, Netflix and even the US tax agency and NASA.
The US government requested their extradition in November 2011.
© 2013 AFP
