Preliminary hearings in Shaltay-Boltay hacking group case postponed to Aug 4
MOSCOW. July 31 (Interfax) - The Moscow City Court has postponed preliminary hearings in the case against Konstantin Teplyakov and Alexander Filinov, charged with obtaining illegal access to computer data while a part of the Shaltay-Boltay hacking group, to August 4, Interfax reported on Monday.
"Preliminary hearings were postponed until August 4, as Teplyakov's new lawyer has joined the case and he needs to study the case files," lawyer Natalya Zemskova, representing Filinov's interests, told reporters.
By court order, the defendants are to remain in custody during the trial, she said.
"The court extended my client's and Konstantin Teplyakov's arrest for six months," Zemskova said.
The Shaltay-Boltay hacker group, also known as Anonymous International, became known several years ago. It intercepted emails and hacked the accounts of high-ranking officials, large companies and media outlets and sold the data on the Internet.
The prime minister's press secretary Natalya Timakova and deputy domestic policy directorate chief at the Presidential Executive Office Timur Prokopenko have been named among possible aggrieved parties, but they have claimed no damage, and the investigation has found no reason to assign them this status.
Vladimir Anikeyev, the leader of the group, known online under the nickname Lewis, was arrested in November 2016, and two other suspected accessories, Konstantin Teplyakov and Alexander Filinov, were arrested later. The investigation against them has been completed and the case materials have been forwarded to the Moscow City Court. Anikeyev concluded a pre-trial deal and agreed to special trial proceedings. He was sentenced to 2.5 years in jail. His defense lawyers decided to appeal.
Alexander Glazastikov, a member of the Shaltay-Boltay group who lives in Estonia, earlier told Dozhd TV channel that Filinov was unlikely to have any relation to the hackers as he had never seen information on him in internal documents.
According to investigators, Anikeyev, "acting in 2013-2016 as part of an organized group and jointly with other individuals, a criminal case against whom was investigated separately, gained unlawful access to computer information belonging to a number of Russian citizens and protected by the law and copied it for sale on web resources used by group members."
