Starovikov and Filippov, who claim to have been software engineers for an organization known as Valtron LLC, are accused of seeking to mislead the court and acting to deny Google access to discoverable data. According to a settlement submitted to Google, the actors demanded $1 million each from the company and $110,000 in legal costs in exchange for providing the private keys to Bitcoin addresses linked to the Glupteba botnet. However, the Mountain View-based company rejected the offer and reported it to law authorities. However, a week later, the defendants changed tactics and said that “they had no such information in their possession and that the Bitcoin accounts were owned by Valtron’s CEO.” District Judge Denise L. Cote stated that “It is now clear that the defendants appeared in this Court not to proceed in good faith to defend against Google’s claims but with the intent to abuse the court system and discovery rules to reap a profit from Google.”
https://thehackernews.com/2022/11/google-wins-lawsuit-against-russians.html
