Russian Oligarch's Insider Trading Scheme Uncovered

Russian oligarch Vladislav Klyushin, linked to Putin, convicted of insider trading in the US. A former Russian spy reveals the extent of Russian intelligence's financial warfare.

### Putin's Trader: The Russian Cyber Insider Trading Operation
* 🕵️  The FBI uncovers a **sophisticated Russian insider trading operation** targeting major US companies, led by a young oligarch named **Vladislav Klyushin** and his hacker partner **Ivan Yermakov**.
* 💼  Klyushin, a well-connected businessman with ties to Russian intelligence, built a hedge fund using **stolen information** to trade on the US stock market, making **millions in illicit profits**.
* 🔍  The FBI's investigation reveals that the hackers gained access to companies' financial data through two filing agents, ultimately traced back to **Moscow**.
* 🛩️  Klyushin's arrest in Switzerland, while boarding a helicopter for a ski trip, leads to his extradition to the US, where he is **convicted and sentenced to 9 years in prison**.
* 🕵️‍♂️  A former Russian spy, now living in the US, provides insights into the **broader context of Russian intelligence operations targeting Western financial systems**.
* 💰  The spy suggests that **insider trading by Russian intelligence is a common practice**, with profits shared among operatives and possibly even government officials.
* 🌐  Experts warn that this case may be just the tip of the iceberg, with potentially more **cyber-enabled insider trading schemes** operating under Russian intelligence.
* 🎙️  The story is now available as a podcast series, "**The Crimes of Putin's Trader**," offering a **deeper dive** into this real-life financial thriller.

On March 21st, 2021, an up-and-coming young Russian oligarch and his wife touched down in their private jet at Sion airport in the Swiss Alps. It's a wedding anniversary celebration, and they're on their way to a luxurious ski vacation. Sion is the gateway to the famed resort of Zermatt, where the elite go to ski and to party. Sion is still an hour's drive from the slopes, so the truly wealthy take a short walk across the tarmac and board helicopters to take them directly to the slopes. The oligarch's name is Vladislav Klyushin, and at this moment, he's at the absolute height of his powers. He's built a fabulously successful company. He's cultivated connections at the highest levels of the Russian government, and he works for the office of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. But what the oligarch doesn't know is that US law enforcement has been monitoring the flight since it

left Moscow, and they want to charge him with crimes
that go to the heart of the American financial system. The victims are investors in iconic American
companies, including names on the cutting edge of the US economy like Tesla, Snapchat, and Roku. At stake is the integrity of American capital markets. It's all part of the dangerous underworld of the
global financial system. One veteran Russian spy tells me the Kremlin sees
financial markets as America's strength and a target to attack. To protect him, we agreed to conceal his identity. But this man who worked for Vladimir Putin's
intelligence service says the case of Vladislav Klyushin was just one small part of a much bigger
Russian operation against Western finance. Klyushin's story is just the part that we can
see. It's a war right now happening between Russia and
the West. Finances and banks and financial sector itself is just
one of the battlefields. I'm Eamon Javers, and this is the story of Putin's
trader.

The story begins when veteran FBI investigator B.J. Kang gets a tip from the Securities and Exchange
Commission, which has spotted a pattern of unusual and suspicious activity in the stock market. They suspect insider trading. Someone is getting
financial information ahead of time against the law and cashing in on Wall Street. The information we got early on was there were a number
of traders that were just hitting it out of the park. Kang is one of the FBI's most storied financial crime
investigators. He's busted some of the most notorious Wall Street
criminals of all time. He was there for the arrest of Ponzi scheme mastermind
Bernie Madoff, and he perp walked insider trader Raj Rajaratnam. That's why Reuters once called him the most feared man
on Wall Street. We worked it as a regular insider trading case. Just go after the evidence and then follow the
evidence and see where that takes you. Working with Kang is Steven Frank, the veteran
prosecutor who led the Varsity Blues case against rich

parents who corrupted the American college admissions
process. Frank began his career as a reporter before going to
law school and becoming a prosecutor. Using that experience, he sizes up the tip that came
in from the SEC. We knew that somebody was up to no good, and we knew
that the scale of it was pretty big because it was happening quarter after quarter in stock after stock,
and all of these different people were trading on it, and they were making a lot of money. So the brazenness of it was really striking to us. The tip reveals that foreign traders are targeting the
biggest American companies, well-known brands like Tesla and Roku, as well as lesser-known companies like
the financial firm SAC technologies and the electronics company Avnet. And millions of dollars in illicit profits for the
traders mean millions of dollars in losses for regular investors in American markets. It's really unfair to have people sitting in the
comfort of their offices overseas behind a wall that they think protects them,
taking

advantage, stealing information and trading on it to
the detriment of investors all over the world. But at the very beginning, we were like, are we ever
really going to be able to figure this out? And even if we can figure it out, are we ever going to
be able to lay hands on these people? The FBI agents knew the overseas traders were making
mysterious and enormous profits in the US stock market. They suspected the explanation might be a computer
intrusion, a hack, but they had to figure out where the traders were getting their information. We went after the IP's, the domains, whatever
information that we got, we went after it subpoenas, court orders, search warrant, subpoenas, court orders,
search warrant. Just wash, rinse, repeat. A lot of those subpoenas went to Western companies that
had access to the suspect's digital history emails, texts, photos, and videos documenting their
lives. The FBI was able to obtain a mountain of
documentation, and buried in all that data was

one striking fact. The SEC reported that all of the targeted companies
had one thing in common. They used the same filing agents. Before this case started, I didn't know what a filing agent was. I've been in this business for a long time. I've worked in securities fraud, and I didn't know
that there was an entire industry of companies that assist publicly traded companies to file the
required reports with the SEC, but they do exist. There's a number of them. And what was unique here was that all of these
different companies and all of these different sectors were using two of these filing agents to file their
quarterly earnings reports. So that's the big light bulb moment. That was a big light bulb moment. Federal prosecutor Seth Costa works alongside Steven
Frank on the case. He sees what the hackers are doing inside the filing
agents' computers. They obtain the usernames and passwords for employees
at the filing agents, and as a result, we're able to log in, like you or I might log
into our office accounts and look through the

confidential information of any company they wanted at
any time. And then they discover indications that the filing
agent computers have been sending data to a network of offshore computers, and someone had taken steps to
hide that traffic. Still, they left behind a clue. Someone had to pay for those computers, and that
someone paid for them with Bitcoin. Investigators discovered the IP address for the
computer that made the Bitcoin transaction. We were watching the hack play out in real time, even
as the filing agents were doing everything they could to lock out the hackers. When they traced back that IP address, they discover
exactly where the cyber attack is coming from. It's coming from Moscow. And I find this, and I'm like, what the what is this? I was like, Holy moly, is this what we think it is? Suddenly, the investigators are finding a lot of
signals, pointing them to Moscow. One of the funny parts was most of the access was
happening in the middle of the night for the employees

whose usernames were being used, and in the middle of
the day in Moscow. So they were working regular business hours in Moscow. Exactly. A tiny mistake by the hacker leads to the breakthrough
they're looking for. One of the Moscow hackers uses his own IP address to
log on to his iTunes account, just before he uses the same IP address to steal
documents from a pharmaceutical company. It's another moment, one Sunday by myself, reviewing
the records and then identifying that IP in his account and then identifying in the logs that we
got from the victim company. So I was like, Holy moly, this is and just four
minutes apart. I said, this is incredible. The hacker registered that Apple account under his real
name, and that means the FBI now knows who he is. Ivan Yermakov. And then once we learned who this guy was, I said, oh
my gosh, this is incredible. This is just this is amazing.

Kang is amazed because American law enforcement has
dealt with Yrmakov before. He's a veteran of the fearsome Russian GRU military
intelligence agency. In 2018, the United States indicted Yermakov, along
with several other GRU hackers, for their alleged roles in the 2016 American presidential
election. Yermakov and the others were charged with breaking
into email accounts of Hillary Clinton presidential aides and releasing those documents to interfere with
the election. Yermakov was also indicted that same year in hacking
and related disinformation campaigns targeting anti-doping agencies and sporting federations. That indictment also said that GRU hackers had
targeted a nuclear energy company in Pennsylvania, and even hacked a chemical lab in
Switzerland that was investigating the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. The GRU target list lines up exactly with the
interests of the Russian government and its leader, Vladimir Putin. Yermakov is a wanted man, and the FBI says he should
be considered armed and dangerous.

They start by learning everything they can about Yermakov, who he is and who he's working for. Now retired or former Russian military officer with a pedigree, so to speak, of having been indicted twice by the Justice Department for his role in influence campaigns. A hacker for hire. They learned that Yermakov is young, ambitious, and has gone to work for a private company. The company is called M13, and it's based in Moscow, in the southern part of the city. The company advertises itself as a cyber security firm, and it tells potential customers it has experts who can test a company's cyber defenses. In other words, it's a hacking company sitting in plain sight. They said, look, we can create teams of black hats who will use hacking techniques to see if they can break into your website, see if they can cover their tracks, see if they can gain access to your most sensitive data.

And then we'll tell you what we were able to do, so you can fix those holes in your network. But then what they did is they turned around and they used exactly the same techniques that they were advertising to hack into these filing agents in the US. M13 works for private clients, but on its website, it also says the company works for the government of the Russian Federation and the office of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. And here's where the story gets really interesting, because all of the FBI agents and federal prosecutors we spoke to were deeply reluctant to discuss anything to do with Vladimir Putin himself, even though M-13 said it worked directly for his office. And Putin is a figure looming over this entire story. One thing is clear: there's something very sensitive going on here. The one name we haven't talked at all about is Vladimir Putin. Um, you can't talk about Vladimir Putin. There's nothing for me to say about that.

Do you think Vladimir Putin himself was aware of these
guys and allowed this to happen? I can't speculate about that. So this is a guy who's worked for Vladimir Putin's
office. He did work for the office of the Russian president. That's as much as as we can say publicly, because
that's what's up on his website. M-13 is run by Ivan Yermakov's new boss, a young up-and-
coming Russian oligarch named Vladislav Klyushin. The digital trail has now led investigators to the
boss of the operation. Klyushin is not, as far as we know, a veteran
intelligence officer himself. He's a businessman and an entrepreneur, but he's well-
connected with Russia's elite intelligence agencies. He goes to parties with officers of the FSB
intelligence agency. That's the successor spy agency to the Cold War era
Russian KGB. Investigators discovered that Klyushin has been
running a hack-to-trade scheme right out of the M13

office for years. He's been making millions of dollars by breaking
American law. You're just going to continue to trade? Trade. You're going to get more money. You're going to use that to trade. Trade it, just free money, printing money, free. You know it's just free money. The evidence investigators gather starts to reveal the
story of what's going on behind the scenes in Moscow. They obtain photos, videos, and documents, emails, and
text messages that the M13 employees are sending to each other. All of that paints a picture of the
young oligarch at the top of the company and what drove him above all else. He was a lot like the kind of people that we prosecute
for white-collar crime here in the United States every day, who don't really need to turn to white-collar
crime in order to be successful because they already are successful. He was wealthy. He had a very nice house. He had very nice cars.

He had a country house, but he wanted more, like so
many of our defendants do. And he found a way to get access to easy money, and he
took it. He doesn't have any specialized computer skills, but
what he does have are connections. Klyushin knows highly placed people in the Russian
intelligence and defense worlds, and he knows a lot of rich Russians. And in June of 2020, he received the Russian Medal of
Honor shown in this photograph, signed by Vladimir Putin himself. He also received this award from the FSB. We don't know exactly what Klyushin did to earn this
spying award, but it's signed by the deputy director of the FSB. We also don't know exactly how or when they
meet, but the oligarch Klyushin and the hacker Yermakov socialized together with Klyushin's
wife and Yermakov's girlfriend. And more than that, the two men strike up a business
partnership and something of a bromance.

They're in near-constant contact. They go out drinking, and they sauna together naked. They text each other about Billions, the American TV drama about corrupt Wall Street traders. I worked so hard, if not to do what we want when we want. Yermakov asks Klyushin if he's seen the final episode of season four of the show. That's the one where a US attorney tries to prosecute a young, up-and-coming hedge fund billionaire. There are birthday parties, fancy dinners, golf, and rooftop barbecues with the M13 team. Klyushin takes the team to the World Cup in Russia, a huge global event and a point of pride for Vladimir Putin's regime. Eating, drinking, celebrating, and showing off their Russian colors, Klyushin and Yermakov share a fondness for helicopter skiing. They shop for expensive things. Klyushin buys a luxury apartment for Yermakov and buys himself a $3 million yacht called

the A-7k from a shipyard in Cyprus. Klyushin texts his employee Yermakov how much he
enjoys being with him. We spend a lot of time together. I feel good and calm. The fact that we can walk home together and have a
beer, or play golf, or simply send everyone to hell knowing you're close. This truly sounds like a nice declaration of love, like
a declaration of love to a girl. I mean, it sounds like a bromance. It was definitely a bromance between those two. Was it a romance? I don't believe so, no, but they were very, very close. They spent a lot of time together, and they definitely
liked each other. They were friends, running a big cybersecurity company. And a secret insider trading scam at the same time is
exhausting, Klyushin texted his pal Yermakov. I am fucking tired rushing all the time. Neither rest.

He fixates on the new yacht. At this point, I want nothing except the boat. This, I want very much. When Yermakov responds to that text, it's as if he's become his boss's therapist, trying to diagnose the root of Klyushin's problems. Then you need nothing. Enjoy your life. You have everything, Yermakov tries to convey some wisdom. I've read somewhere that if you keep buying while you have everything, it means you're unhappy. He had accomplished the American dream, but he had accomplished it in Russia. But it doesn't seem like that was ever enough for him. He wanted to accomplish more. Where did this unhappiness and greed come from? Klyushin, who was born in 1980, comes from humble origins. He's the son of a single teen mother, and he's never known his father. He started working at age 13 to help lift his family out of poverty, but his brainpower

took him far. Graduating from the Moscow Academy of
Economics and Law, and going on to get a master's degree in management, he married his second wife,
Janna, at an exclusive country club outside Moscow, producing a lavish wedding video fit for an up-and-coming oligarch. He has five children between his two marriages. Well, you know, they say money can't buy happiness. And that's as true in Russia, apparently, as it is in
the United States. It may have been that deep emotional longing for more
that led Klyushin to his next scheme: professionalization of the hack to trade operation. Building up a hedge fund designed to prey on American
companies with stolen information. We learned during the investigation that he brought in
investors, significant participants in the Russian business community, who gave Mr. Klyushin their money. He invested it for them using the services of his
hacker and made them approximately $15 million, taking 50 to 60% of the
profits.

as his cut. The kind of cut that I think would make a hedge fund
manager blush. He was hoping to get investors to put money in a fund
that they thought would be legitimately invested, and in fact, he'd be trading on
inside information. He wanted to create Insider Trading, LLC. Exactly. The scam is churning out profits, but Klyushin is right
that he needs a break. He's running ragged, and he's beginning to make
mistakes of his own, and his employees start to worry that the boss is going to blow up the whole operation. Vlad, you are exposing our organization. This is bad. The Russian M-13 hacking gang has perfected their hack
to trade scheme, and collusion is making more money than he's ever seen before. He had the money to live the good life, and I'm sure he
just wanted to maintain that lifestyle. To celebrate, Klyushin buys four Porsche sports cars
for himself, Yermakov, and investors.

In the scheme, he attaches vanity license plates
featuring the number 13, in honor of their company, M13. Inside the operation, M13 computer screens are
flowing with stolen stock market information. Klyushin's team pours over American corporate earnings
reports before the financial world can see them. At one point, they focus in on Tesla, the electric car
company. M13 hackers steal Tesla's draft earnings release and
seeing the results buy shares in advance. Klyushin sends a text to two of the investors
in the scheme, giving them a heads up. Pay attention to shares of Tesla now and tomorrow after
16:30 and on how much they go up. After the market closes, Tesla reports its earnings. But of course, Klyushin knows what's coming. It's a monster number, more than $6.8 billion in
revenue. This was an incredibly historic quarter for Tesla. In fact, we delivered more cars in this quarter than we
did in all of 2016 in a single quarter.

Wall Street is dazzled. It's much better news than traders expected, and
Tesla's shares soar. In the second quarter of 2019. The M13 team steals documents showing that sneaker
company Skechers is going to surprise the market with positive news. The M13 traders buy stock in Skechers, betting the
price will go up. They make more than $1 million on that single trade. They're making millions of dollars just sitting at
their desks breaking into these American companies, stealing information day after day after
day, and just trading on it. The gang's earnings get even better with cosmetics
company Ulta Beauty. M13s stolen documents showed the earnings were a miss
and what's worse, for shareholders. The company updates its financial guidance downward. The M13 gang shorts the stock betting it's going to go
down there, right? Ulta's price plummets by 30% when the news comes out
for M-13.

That's great news. The gang makes almost $2 million overnight on a single
trade. They gleefully text details of how much they and their
investors are making. Klyushin reports to Yermakov that one investor had
already made profits of close to $1 million, nearly tripling his investment. A second investor had made profits of close to
$700,000, nearly doubling his money. They don't even ask why so anymore. The money is literally piling up. Klyushin has a safe in which he stashes stacks of $100
bills, gradually filling it until at one point it holds $3 million in cash. The M13 team knows they're playing a dangerous game. If you're doing this stuff for a long period of time,
there's going to be some slip up. Perhaps as a warning to himself, Klyushin keeps a
printout of a Reuters article about a Ukrainian hacker getting sentenced to prison in a US insider trading
case.

There are moments when you've found that tantalizing
clue, and you realize that you're breaking open this case and
unraveling this scheme. We had a moment like that when we obtained a Threema
chat. This was an encrypted chat among our hackers, a chat
that they never thought anyone outside of them would see. They were unguarded in that
conversation, and they were having explicit conversations about what they were doing as they were
doing it. Klyushin uses the Threema app to send pictures of his
outside investors to the rest of the gang. He tells his M13 employees the investors want to know
how trading is going. What did we earn today? Our comrades are wondering. Yermakov, the veteran intelligence officer, is alarmed. He immediately texts his boss. Vlad, you are exposing our organization. This is bad. Vlad, stop sending to Threema. So sorry. And that's how they get you.

And you end up as a defendant in a courtroom. It was a bad move now. Sorry. Did a dumb thing. When investigators read these texts, they're stunned. I'm just looking at your face, and I can see that you
are astonished that you got this kind of access to this information. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's one of those breaks in a
case that you sort of dream about, right? When you actually have the criminals speaking in
unvarnished terms about the crime and admitting that it's a crime. How did you feel when you saw those messages? I mean, those are case enders, and they were. The M-13 crew is also learning that winning on Wall
Street is harder than it looks, even with stolen documents. Insider trading is not easy. These are hardened Russian hackers. They're very smart, brilliant even in their field. But
they just don't have any experience in finance. Even when they had inside information, they weren't
100%.

accurate or correct in their trading. They didn't get it right 100% of the time. Sometimes they misread the information that they had. Sometimes they missed something that was in there, or
sometimes the market didn't react in a way that they expected when they didn't trade on material nonpublic
information. They were actually terrible traders who lost money
more than they made money. The anguished texts of the M13 gang sound like a
bizarro version of the banter you'd hear on a Wall Street trading floor. What are you thinking to do with Roku? So far, there is no reason for such a drastic fall. We acted too hastily. This was not us who were hasty. It is market that is acting strangely. Should we wait for come back? I think so, too big of a loss otherwise. Let's see what's going to be happening. Today the market situation is complicated. Whatever should be going up, going down and vice
versa.

The gang comes to some tough conclusions about their
own performance in the market. We implement poor trading ideas due to low level
competencies as traders. We suck in placing stops and take profits, but they are good enough to make $93 million in less
than three years. They're so successful they begin to raise suspicions. At Saxo Bank, the Danish online broker M13 is using to
place trades. The bank schedules a call with M13 to ask how exactly
they're doing this. And for the first time, the M13 gang is on the
defensive. Klyushin's solution is to tell a pack of lies. On the call, Klyushin lies to a bank official, saying
that M-13 has developed an app called Preston that analyzes social media and the internet to
forecast stock trends, which is why M-13 has been so successful. A translator relays Klyushin's Russian into English. He assured us that they are not using any kind of
insider information.

They only use what is available in public sources. Klyushin is forced to explain the spectacular success
the company had in its Tesla trades. His story is that M-13 based its Tesla trades on Elon
Musk's infamous 420 funding secured tweet, when the billionaire rocked
financial markets by saying he was considering taking Tesla private at that price. Of course, that's not true either. So soon? He also gave an example of how they acted upon
when Elon Musk published last year about 420. This intention or whatever this happened. And then they were shot by by the minute before the
publication of the. This is Klyushin's actual voice on the call. It's another lie. Klyushin says M13 doesn't have any outside investors,
but of course it does. He's been texting the investors pictures to his M13
team, and then Klyushin makes things worse for M13 when he offers to share a copy of the Preston app
with Saxo Bank on the call, his

employees panic knowing the app isn't ready they
stall frantically. A spokesperson for Saxo Bank told CNBC that the bank
can't comment on former client relationships. But the spokesperson said that whenever
our control systems detect potentially suspicious trading behavior we report to the relevant
authorities on our own initiative. Klyushin and his M13 coconspirators have no way to
know it but in Washington BJ Kang and his team at the FBI are getting closer and
closer to unraveling their scheme. Was there ever a situation where you felt like this
thing might fall apart? Every single day. Every single single day? No I say that facetiously but we collected so much
information. We've identified so many traders. But then as we got closer to say you know what? Now now we have enough to actually charge people. Now we got to really be careful. We've got to make sure that these guys don't know the
FBI is involved.

Radio silent even as M13 tangles with Saxo Bank,
Vladislav Klyushin is trying to become something like the Bernie Madoff of the cyber
age. This could be enormously destabilizing to American
financial markets. The FBI has to act fast. But how so? At that point, it seems like this changes from being
an investigation where you're gathering information, and now it becomes something more like a manhunt. A manhunt usually is when you have no idea where the
person was. In this case, we knew exactly where he was. It was a question of whether he would go to a place
that we could rely on our relationships to secure an arrest. That was really probably the most frustrating part of
our investigation, is realizing we now know who's done this. We know how they've done it. We know how much money they've made. We've actually managed to stop the crime in its
tracks. But are we ever going to be able to lay hands on these
guys because they're in a country that's not going to

extradite them? But we just laid in wait, and we
watched. Yermakov knows he's been indicted twice by the United
States, which means travel to any nation that has an extradition treaty with the Americans would be
enormously risky. As a former GRU officer, he's probably been given
government guidance not to travel. Still, he yearns to see the world, and Klyushin, ever
confident and always willing to use his connections to help his friends, wants to help him do
that. In text messages between the two in 2019, they discuss
how Yermakov could travel. Klyushin sends Yermakov a scenic picture of himself
traveling outside Russia. Yermakov: very beautiful. I wonder if I could do that some day? Klyushin responds with an offer. Easy, but under a different full name. I will arrange it myself. Yermakov: Do you think that a different full name would do the
trick?

Yes, 100%. We will definitely go to Europe. I don't know about London or America. Yermakov. Well, okay. Klyushin says he has asked his high-level intelligence contacts using the acronym for the FSB's Department of Military Counterintelligence, which exists to hunt for Western spies inside the Russian Army. Klyushin: I checked with DVKR. I can live with that. Let's not delay and start traveling now. I got the hint, and I'm working in that direction. There's no evidence that Yermakov ever got that fake passport to allow him to travel, but Klyushin is brimming with confidence, and he really, really wants to go skiing in the Alps. And then it happens. In March of 2021, the FBI discovers Klyushin has chartered a private jet to fly from Moscow to Switzerland. They set up a plan to capture him. It was pretty nerve-wracking.

It's a breathless moment. You're literally holding your breath to see how
this is going to play out, and whether we're ultimately going to be able to grab him. We had exceptional cooperation from our partners in
Switzerland. We knew that he was on this plane. We knew where he was going and when he was going to
land. They ultimately made the arrest. He landed on this private plane. He was actually in ski gear, getting off the plane,
ready to board a helicopter that was waiting for him. He was about to go skiing, and the Swiss agents were
waiting for him. They swooped in, they arrested him, and minutes after
they arrested him, his wife sent a text message. The text message that she sent was to his
coconspirator, Mr. Yermakov. That was devastating evidence of their
conspiracy. She sees handcuffs being placed on her husband, and the
first person she reaches out to is the former Russian military intelligence
officer that we've identified as the actual

hacker. After a diplomatic tug-of-war with the Swiss
government, the United States secures Vladislav Klyushin's extradition to face his indictment on four
counts related to the insider trading operation. Yermakov and another M-13 employee are also indicted
in the scheme, but both men remain in Russia, where they are beyond the reach of US law
enforcement. A government plane flies Klyushin to Boston,
Massachusetts, where he goes on trial before a federal jury, and in February 2023, he's convicted of
securities fraud, wire fraud, gaining unauthorized access to computers,
and conspiracy to commit those crimes. He's sentenced to nine years in an American prison. Klyushin is also ordered to forfeit more than $34
million and pay restitution, in an amount to be determined later. Ivan Yermakov, who warned his boss about ending up in
a courtroom, remains at large. He's presumably still in Moscow, and other M-13
employees also remain free.

Vladislav Klyushin is sent to the Federal Correctional
Institution, Fort Dix in New Jersey to serve out his sentence, and that would seem to be the end of the story. But there's more to this because as I was reporting
out this project, a source connected me with a former Russian spy now living in the United States under an
assumed name. He knows all about Vladislav Klyushin, Ivan Yermakov,
and the whole M-13 insider trading operation. What he told me puts everything that you've
just heard in an entirely new perspective. To protect him from retribution from the
Russian government, we've agreed to disguise his identity. We hired an actor to replace his voice. But every word here comes directly from the former
Russian spy. My job was to collect pretty much the same information
on behalf for the Russian state from the West, for my sources. So these guys got busted.

Okay, but this is just one small, tiny piece of what
is going on. This man knows Russian intelligence operations from the
inside out because he's a former Russian spy, an officer of the FSB. He switched sides, came to the United States, and lives
here now under an assumed identity. He's wary of reprisal from the Russian government for
betraying his country. So we sat down with him in person at a location inside
the United States that we have agreed not to reveal for his safety. To start with, what name should we use with you, John? Mike, whatever you want. I guess that's the best option. Okay. Uh, John or Mike, you spent a lot of years in the
Russian FSB, in the intelligence services. Tell me a little bit about that experience. How long were you a Russian spy? Around 16 years in service. I was an operative. My job was to recruit sources among Russian foreign
businessmen and use them as

assets for the Russian state. Collecting information so on. Primarily, fieldwork was finance, its banking system,
and the financial sector itself. At some point, you decided you had to leave? Yes. Why was that? It was a personal matter. My life was in danger, and not only mine, but my
wife's life as well. And I had no choice at all. So you came to the United States? Yes. I mean, let's say the Americans brought us to the
United States. John or Mike says the collusion operation was just a
small part of an overall Russian strategy designed to respond unconventionally to
American financial sanctions. He describes a strategy in which Vladimir Putin
authorizes his top intelligence officers to wreak havoc on Western economies. It's a war right now happening between Russia and the
West or East and West. Confrontation, finances and banks and financial sector
itself is just one of the battlefields where the whole thing is happening.

So they have to be creative. So the cyber attacks or the insider trading, all of
the stuff, it's kind of a weapon and tools they can use against the West. He says many of his former bosses in Russian
intelligence are stealing Western financial information for their own personal profit. How often does that happen in the Russian intelligence
services? I would say that's pretty normal practice. The Russians do operate freely inside the Western
financial system as operatives, and they have assets. You're saying Russian spies in the United States have
been stealing financial information from American companies for years and profiting from it? Sure they do. Not only are Russian spies profiting from it, but
the people to whom they've been delivering this information. Yeah, that's for sure. So their bosses back in Moscow. Bosses back in Moscow, or companies which are
affiliated with the Kremlin and Kremlin operations. So Russian spies are insider trading in the United
States all the time.

Well, I can only say from my own personal experience, but what I say from my career, what I was doing, that was pretty common. Yeah, did you see insider trading in US markets while you were inside the FSB? I saw the information which was extracted. And you're saying it's more than just cyber attacks, it's also spying in person. It is the most important part, the cyber attack. Again, it's traceable. But if you have a mole inside, hypothetical mole inside a private business company, right? This person can sit there for years, for years, decades. No one's going to say anything as long as this person is not doing anything stupid. He's not buying some Bugattis, Lamborghinis, Porsches, and so on. And you know for a fact from your own experience that there are moles inside American companies passing this kind of information now. I can't say this kind of information, but that was my job to recruit foreign

businessmen, including Americans. So yes. And how did you do that? How did you recruit them? Charm. You are charming. No, I'm. I'm kidding. It's a long process. You need to collect information. You need to pick the person. It's a long process. Like a shark. You have to circle around. What this spy is saying is pretty shocking. And it has profound implications for the US financial system. I wanted to check that with some American experts. Are there more gangs like solutions? Are there more Russian intelligence vets hacking into American companies? Google's Sandra Joyce is a cybersecurity expert, and from her perch in the private sector, she's seen it all. What strikes her about the collusion m-13 crime, though, is just how easy the insider trading hacking was. We know that the GRU has some incredible capabilities. If you think about it, they were behind turning off the lights in Kyiv in 2015 and 2016.

If you recall the NotPetya incident, where worldwide
shipping came to a halt, that was the GRU. So they're capable of doing some pretty incredible
hacks. So for a guy like Yermakov, this was easy pickings. For a guy like him in the GRU, this probably would have been on the easy side for
them. Do you worry about guys with that kind of experience
bleeding off into the private sector and sort of setting themselves up as, you know, pirates with a
letter of marque kind of working in Russia with that kind of skill set, attacking American companies? Well, right now we are seeing this surge of ransomware
and extortion to American companies, and that is coming out of Russia primarily, and also
Eastern Europe. So we do feel that it's a huge concern and a
national security issue for sure. And I talked with Joe Bonavolonta, who ran the FBI's
Boston division during the investigation.

He says M13 is probably not the only cyber-enabled
insider trading gang out there. Do you think this kind of hacking to trade is
happening more often than we know? I do. When you look at the defendants in this case, and
there was in excess of 90, approximately 90 some odd million dollars that
were generated or made from this criminal scheme, you could imagine when you
extrapolate that across other groups or individuals that are conducting this, it's significant. Do you think Yermakov is out there insider trading
right now? That I couldn't answer. I don't know what he's doing right now. I mean, if he doesn't plan on going skiing in
Switzerland, he can sit in Moscow and do this all day long. Well, he could potentially do that. But think of the additional risk he's taking where he
is now. The subject of three very significant federal
indictments. Yeah, but he seems to shrug those off, right?

I mean, they just pile up in an office in Washington
somewhere. If he doesn't leave Moscow or doesn't leave Russia. He's kind of untouchable. But I don't think he would shrug those off if, in fact,
he did wind up, uh, you know, traveling one day and he was picked up. It's that specter that hangs over these individual
shoulders, really, for the rest of their lives, which is not an easy way to live. And finally, I wanted to get an answer from the Russian
spy John or Mike about Vladimir Putin's role in all of this. What's in it for Vladimir Putin? He allows his Russian intelligence services to gather
this information, trade in their own accounts, make themselves wealthy. What does he get from that? I'm not sure. I'm not his accountant. Ah. And I guess no one knows. But as for the state companies, let's say state
affiliated companies or

businesses manipulated with the Kremlin, that's a
huge, huge benefit. So they imagine that they are 1 or 2 steps
ahead of the West in this case. And is this kind of a perk or a benefit for Putin to
offer to his top guys and sort of say, I'll allow you to do this, get yourselves rich as long as
you're destabilizing Western businesses, that's okay with me. Imagine how great from the state perspective. In this case, you pretty much have guys who were
allowed to do whatever they want to make money as much as they want, and they don't need to pay them at
all. They can do it on their own, like pretty pretty much
just yeah, they are freelancers. In other words, Putin seemingly gets free hacking
services, destabilizes the West, and his trusted insiders get rich. It's a win all the way around and
John or Mike leaves us with one other thought.

His theory is that Kluyshin and Yermakov didn't discover that the filing agents were the best target on their own. This spy says that someone else probably handed that tip to Klyushin and Yermakov, and that someone may have gotten a cut of the profits. Someone guided them there. Who was that? Do you know. Guys who know the business? So spies who do the job in this line of work. And they kind of they figure out, yeah, that's the weakest spot, how we can get the information. Wow. I hadn't even thought of that. Well, because you're a good guy. I'm a bad guy. And that's where our story ends for now. It was pretty clear from our conversations that the United States government is still watching Ivan Yermakov. Waiting to see if he ever takes that ski trip and if what the former Russian spy tells us is correct. There's a whole hidden world of Russian intelligence insider trading for the FBI to

investigate next. For CNBC, I'm Eamon Javers. It took our investigative team countless hours to
unravel the mysteries of Putin's trader. Chasing down sources, going deep into a criminal web
spun by those at the highest levels of global power. You can join us in every step of this gripping
journey by following and listening to our limited podcast series called The Crimes of Putin's Trader. It's the expanded universe of this real-life thriller
featuring exclusive spy interviews and behind-the-scenes reporting. Follow our series now wherever you
get your podcasts, and be the first to get notified about new episodes.

Putin’s Trader — How Russian Hackers Stole Millions from U.S. Investors | CNBC Documentary

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A young Russian oligarch, Vladislav Klyushin, is being monitored by US law enforcement for financial crimes related to American companies like Tesla and Snapchat.

Kang and prosecutor Steven Frank, uncovers a pattern of suspicious trading targeting major US companies, leading to illicit profits for foreign traders and losses for regular investors.

The investigation reveals that the traders were obtaining information from filing agents of the targeted companies, highlighting a significant security breach in the American financial system.

Russian Cyber Attack: Tracing the Hack to Moscow

Investigators uncover a cyber attack on filing agents, leading them to Moscow.

The hacker's mistake of using his own IP address for a Bitcoin transaction and iTunes account allows the FBI to identify him as Ivan Yermakov, a veteran of the Russian GRU military intelligence agency.

Yermakov works for M13, a Moscow-based cyber security firm with ties to the Russian government and Vladimir Putin, led by Russian oligarch Vladislav Klyushin, who is involved in a hack-for-hire scheme.

The Unfolding of Klyushin's Insider Trading Scheme

A Russian oligarch, Klyushin, built a multimillion-dollar insider trading operation with the help of a hacker, using stolen information to profit from American companies.

The investigation uncovered Klyushin's lavish lifestyle, his close relationship with the hacker, and his relentless pursuit of wealth despite his humble origins.

Despite his success, Klyushin's deep emotional longing for more drove him to orchestrate the professionalization of the insider trading scheme, ultimately making millions for himself and his investors.

The Rise and Fall of Klyushin's Insider Trading Scheme

Klyushin builds a successful insider trading scheme, making millions from stolen information and insider trading tips, living a lavish lifestyle with expensive cars and a growing stack of cash.

However, the operation becomes reckless, leading to mistakes and a potential unraveling of the scheme.

The scheme's downfall is sealed when incriminating Threema chats are uncovered, ultimately leading to Klyushin's legal troubles and the realization that insider trading is not as easy as it seems.

The M13 Gang's Dubious Trading Activities

The M13 gang was unsuccessful and lost more money than they made in their trading activities.

They resorted to lying about their trading strategies and using fake apps to explain their success when questioned by Saxo Bank.

The FBI was closing in on the M13 gang, leading to a tense manhunt and uncertainty about their extradition.

The Capture and Conviction of Vladislav Klyushin

Vladislav Klyushin, a key figure in an insider trading operation, is arrested in Switzerland after attempting to flee to the Alps for skiing.

He is extradited to the US, where he is convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison for securities fraud and other charges.

A former Russian spy, who defected to the US, provides insider information on Klyushin and the M-13 operation, shedding new light on the story.

Russian Spies' Involvement in Financial Espionage and Insider Trading

Russian spies have been instructed by Vladimir Putin to disrupt Western economies through cyber attacks, insider trading, and stealing financial information.

This activity is described as a part of Russia's unconventional strategy to combat American financial sanctions.

A former Russian spy confirms that insider trading and stealing Western financial information is a common practice for Russian intelligence, with operatives freely operating inside the Western financial system.

Cybersecurity experts express concerns about the GRU's capabilities and the surge of ransomware and extortion targeting American companies, posing a significant national security issue.

The Impact of Cyber-Enabled Insider Trading

Cyber-enabled insider trading is potentially widespread, with the M13 group generating millions from their criminal scheme.

Yermakov, a key figure in the case, is considered untouchable as long as he remains in Russia, raising questions about the frequency of such illegal activities.

Vladimir Putin's role in allowing Russian intelligence services to profit from insider trading provides significant benefits, creating a hidden world of investigation for the FBI.